Ezekiel 20

Subdivision 3 (Ezekiel 20:1-49; Ezekiel 21:1-32; Ezekiel 22:1-31; Ezekiel 23:1-49; Ezekiel 24:1-27).The full exposure of the people’s sin, the heart laid bare.

Ezekiel 20:1-44

Section 1 (Ezekiel 20:1-44).Rebellion from the beginning hitherto, though still God’s purpose as to them abides. We have now, therefore, their history given from the beginning. We have had it already in various aspects, but here it is shown how consistent, alas, had been the conduct of the people from their very birth as a nation in Egypt to the present time. Constant grace had been shown them; on their part constantly resisted, and thus made ineffectual. Still the purpose of that grace abides, as we see in the end here. God would not leave His gracious purpose to end in failure, whatever may be man’s sin against it. Once more, therefore, we are reminded that the promise abides, and that God will perform it in His own wonderful way.

1. We have a new date now, which is significant. “It came to pass in the seventh year, in the fifth month, the tenth of the month, that certain of the elders of Israel came to inquire of Jehovah, and they sat before me.” This seventh year with the numbers of responsibility attaching to the month and day, with which we are already familiar, naturally connects itself with the subject before us. We have once more a deputation of elders to inquire of Jehovah, and once again their inquiry is unanswered -it is not even uttered, one would say. They represent, as we see by their inquiry, the professed orthodoxy of the people of whom they are the leaders. But God has nothing to say to them; that is, He has nothing that will answer to their expectations. They are looking for good, and there is nothing but evil that can be announced to them.

They fully represent those fathers who, according to the current proverb, had set their teeth on edge and the prophet is commissioned only to set before them the way in which they were repeating their fathers’ abominations. We cannot but remember how in the Lord’s time, the scribes and Pharisees were pleading, in the same way as was done here, their right of exemption from the judgment coming for their fathers, deeds, and how the Lord meets them at that time: “Ye are witnesses,” He says, “that ye are the children of them who killed the prophets. Fill ye up, then, the measure of your fathers” (Matthew 23:31-32). What is most manifest here is the moral unity of the generations which succeeded one another. There is a perfect monotony of evil all the way through, from the nation’s birth in Egypt to Ezekiel’s time, and nothing else can be expected until God acts in the sovereignty of His Own grace, at last to fulfil His promises in spite of this continuous rebellion. The elders here are not spoken of as the same company that had previously come to inquire of the prophet, but they are met in the same way, for there is no moral difference. God will not suffer any more inquiry from them. What right have they to inquire, when the terms upon which He alone can be with them have been fully before them, so continually pressed upon them also by the voices of the prophets whom God raised up, and violated all the time? Their own consciences would witness that their hearts were untrue in the inquiry itself. There was no need, therefore, but to remind them of their fathers, abominations: they would find in them a mirror of their own. For this cm the long history is brought before them, beginning from the time God had chosen them, making Himself known in the land of Egypt, to bring them out of it into the land He had selected for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, the glory of all lands.

But they were all defiled with the abominations of Egypt, and God had warned them from the outset that these must be put away. Yet with His judgments upon the gods of Egypt before their very eyes, they had not put them away so that in Egypt itself He had threatened to pour out His wrath upon them. What an inside picture of the condition of things already in the people whom His grace was taking up! Yet He had taken them up, and for His name’s sake still wrought, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations among whom they were, with whom God was dealing through them, and with purposes of mercy towards those also who might listen to His powerful voice. Israel was thus a witness of the living God, proclaiming Himself in the sight of all in bringing them out of the land of Egypt.*
2. The wilderness begins another portion of their history yet how thoroughly it resembled that which had come to an end! What deliverances God had wrought for them how thoroughly He had declared Himself to them. Question there could not be, one would say, as to the power or grace of One who was among them, making Himself known in constant miracles. Yet it is not of these that He speaks here, but rather of the statutes and judgments which He had given them, which pointed to the way of life. His sabbaths were the seal upon all these, a sign between God and them of the rest which He designed for them.

Not a hard taskmaster was He, but their gracious Deliverer: He ever would point them to the rest, for themselves and the very cattle with them, the memorial of that creation-rest when, satisfied with the perfect goodness of all that He had created, Himself rested. But man’s sin had soon broken in upon it, and they continually repeated this: “They walked not in my statutes, and they rejected my judgments, which if a man do, he shall live by them and my sabbaths they greatly profaned.” Thus again, as in His words to Moses, He had to threaten them with the wrath which could so easily have consumed them; but still His mercy held back the merited reward of their sins, and again it was for His name’s sake that He wrought, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations before whose eyes He had brought them out. How much depended upon the preservation of the witness of what He was amid the idols with which everywhere men had surrounded themselves! But God could not bring, as He had been ready to bring, that generation into the land which He had promised them; for their hearts yet were after the idols they had seen smitten by Him blow after blow. How useless that man’s mind should be convinced when his heart is deliberately astray! God’s eye had spared them so as not to destroy them, not to make a full end of them in the wilderness; and once again He took their children by the hand, saying: “Walk not in the statutes of your fathers, neither observe their judgments, nor defile yourselves with their idols: I am Jehovah your God;” but was answered after their former manner. They again refused the statutes which commended themselves to their consciences. They profaned the sabbaths, the sign of the rest which He desired for them; and even before the land was reached, He had again to threaten them with the wrath which love and pity held back from a people who were to be the bearers of His name before the nations; for how could He destroy that which alone remained as a witness at all? Yet, through all that time, as the prophet Amos bears distinct witness, they deserted Him for the false gods around them.

His own words by the prophet appeal to them: “Have ye offered unto Me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? Nay, ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god which ye made to yourselves. Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus, saith the Lord, whose name is the God of hosts” (Amos 5:25-27). Thus the wilderness had decided as to the issue which only now in Ezekiel’s time was becoming history; and since they had rejected His statutes, and their eyes were after their fathers, idols, He had to “give them,” as in strong language He puts it here -give them over to “statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live:” that is, give them over to statutes of the heathen around them, as we see immediately when He adds: “And I polluted them with their own gifts in that they caused to pass through the fire all that opened the womb” (every first-born whom the Lord had sanctified to Himself), “that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am Jehovah.” People ask still for evidences of Christianity, as if God had not been heaping evidence upon evidence; and here was a people before whose eyes were constant miracles, which forbade men to doubt the reality and power of their Deliverer, yet the answer given to Him was only in unfaithfulness and blasphemy. 3. There is but a glance at their history in the land. What would come upon them, as we have seen, was already pronounced; and this in itself declared what would be their conduct, which God foresaw. Fresh privileges would be only fresh opportunity for evil; and the high hills of the land to which they were now brought, and the trees which showed its fertility, became for them the places of idolatrous resort where they lifted up, professedly to Him, offerings that provoked Him, or would fain have hid amongst the trees the sin from which they could not be divorced. Their sweet savor was for others than Himself. Their drink-offerings of joy became but drunken revels in honor of their multitudinous deities.

This worship in the high places had left its marks upon the land in the very names by which they were known. Thus everywhere, upon the face of the country and the city alike, they had written out their sentence. 4. As to all their history, therefore, there was nothing more to say. Reformations attempted here and there by some of their kings, and all that was accomplished by the prophets whom God had raised up amongst them, altered in no wise the character of things below the surface. What a witness against man it is! And the history of the Church on earth has still been a viler history, when we think of the higher privileges perverted, and the sweeter communications of God’s grace -a grace now fully declared. We are today, as a mass, just where Ezekiel was in his day, although we may hide it from ourselves, as they would fain have hidden it also.

A spiritual captivity may be more easily denied, of course, than their external one; but “as in water face answereth face, so the heart of man to man.” We may worship silver and gold still, while we do not make it into the hideous shapes which once were made. We may civilize and refine, while altering nothing as to the terrible reality of hearts that are away from God; and we are surely now, at the very end, face to face with an impending judgment to which Scripture bears fullest witness. An outbreak of evil is at hand which will fill the world once more with a darkness of which the prophets of Israel bore witness: “Darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the peoples” -and this at the time when it is said as to Israel, “The Lord shall arise upon thee, and His glory shall be seen upon thee” (Isaiah 60:2). We have cause, therefore, to enter into the feelings of the prophet as God’s voice denounces those who, with the light that He had given them, deliberately preferred darkness, who said: “We will be as the nations, as the families of the countries in serving wood and stone.” They had plenty of evidence of this before their eyes; but whatever presents itself as a hiding from God has always been, alas, acceptable to those whose hearts wander from Him. If He reigns at all, it must be in power, therefore: “As I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, surely with a mighty hand, and with an. outstretched arm, and with wrath poured out will I reign over you. And I will bring you out from the peoples, and will gather you out from the countries wherein ye are scattered, with a mighty hand and with an out-stretched arm, and with wrath poured out. And I will bring you into the wilderness, and there will I enter into judgment with you face to face.” Here we are plainly carried on to what is still future. They are now indeed scattered in the countries and among many peoples, yet they are with reviving hope turning once more to the land which God is indeed keeping vacant for them, expecting to find quiet possession, to obtain it as a mere matter of merchandise and by successful politics. But that is not what God has in mind for them; for the record of their history has yet to be faced, and that record, unrepented of, can only be faced in judgment. Thus, God will gather out, but only into a condition of things such as when He brought Jacob their father out of Padan-aram to meet the consequences of the sin which had driven him there, and for which, if God is to interfere for him, He must wrestle with him Himself. Thus Peniel must be known by the nation also before they can know Bethel. And “like as I entered into judgment with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so will I enter into judgment with you, saith the Lord Jehovah; and I will cause you to pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant.” It is for mercy, and yet through judgment; for mercy will once more rejoice against judgment. But the judgment must itself do a necessary work: “I will purge out from among you the rebels, and them that transgress against Me, and I will bring them forth out of the land where they sojourn, but they shall not enter into the land of Israel; and ye shall know that I am Jehovah.” This is not, of course, the whole history of the people in that day soon to come. There will be those who doubtless will return to their land and get a certain possession of it for a while, but only to end in a worse condition than ever, as they yield themselves to an idolatry more terrible than all that has been seen among them yet. People may scout even the possibility of this, while false christs and false prophets are everywhere rising up, leading men captives with unblushing delusions. We do not enter into the details here, which the book of Daniel is to bring fully before us but the issue is given by the prophet Isaiah in words that cannot be mistaken, except wilfully. Thus he speaks: “In that day shall the Branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel. And it shall come to pass that he that is left in Zion and he that remaineth in Jerusalem shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem, when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof, by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning.” There is no room to say that this has been fulfilled in any time of their previous history, for the prophet goes immediately on to what is certainly still future: “And the Lord will create upon every dwelling place of Mount Zion and upon her assemblies a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night; for upon all the glory shall be a defence. And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain” (Isaiah 4:2-6). To the time pictured here, Ezekiel will bring us before his prophecy is run out. Here what we have is the intervening judgment, the judgment which has scattered and will scatter, the judgment which has overturned and will overturn, “until He come whose right it is,” and the kingdom shall be His to whose hands it belongs. 5. Even here a brief glance is permitted forward at the blessing that shall be. Israel is dismissed, as it were, for the time present, to go and serve every one his idols as he lists. Only, let them do it openly, and not with the profanation of His holy name as attached to it. For once again God will, and finally, sanctify His name, and that in the grace which is His, and which we cannot wonder at when we know how it has dealt with ourselves: “For in my holy mountain, in the mountain of the height of Israel” (that is, when the mountain of the house shall finally be lifted up, and exalted above the top of the mountains, as God has declared, Isaiah 2:2), “there shall all the house of Israel serve Me -the whole of it, in the land. There will I accept them, and there will I require your heave offerings and the firstfruits of your offerings, with all your holy things.

As a sweet savor will I accept you, when I bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries wherein ye have been scattered, and am sanctified in you in the sight of the nations.” Yes, if He is sanctified in judgment first, as He must be, yet will He only be sanctified fully in blessing, as becomes Him. What a time when the people who have been Ms witnesses in spite of themselves, in all the scattering by which they have fulfilled the words of their ancient prophets, and still by their preservation in which is contemplated the mercy that awaits them! “And ye shall know that I am Jehovah, when I shall bring you into the land of Israel, into the country which I lifted up my hand to give to your fathers; and there ye shall remember your ways and all your doings wherein ye have polluted yourselves, and ye shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for all your evils which ye have committed. And ye shall know that I am Jehovah when I have wrought with you for my name’s sake, not according to your evil ways, nor according to your corrupt doings, O house of Israel, saith the Lord Jehovah.” This, then, is how the story ends. There is no triumph of man in it, but there is the triumph of God’s own sovereign grace. The view of their history given here is morally complete. We have not details, but for its purpose what is more suited, the character of that history as a whole. Whatever the individual exceptions, and the superficial and momentary revivals which we know have been, God has not yet interpreted by the event what He means by working for His name’s sake. Then His name, so long profaned, shall be indeed honored, according to the psalmist’s words of praise, anticipating those of the nation: “Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even our own God, shall bless us. God shall bless us, and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him” Psalms 67:6-7).

Ezekiel 20:45-21

Section 2 (Ezekiel 20:45-49; Ezekiel 21:1-32).The sword upon the righteous and the wicked. We are nearing the end of all this part of Ezekiel -the first Division. There is little more now than the reiterated announcement of judgment, which in the last chapter, the 24th, we see begun. Nebuchadnezzar has there begun the siege of the city, which we see him here contemplating. And with this commencement of what the prophet has announced, the word for the present ceases. There is no need and no use in any further announcement. The chapter before us shows the sword in Nebuchadnezzar’s hand as God’s judgment upon the land, a judgment so complete that it sweeps away the righteous and the wicked together; that is, the whole land was desolate.

It is not meant that there is no discrimination between the righteous and the wicked, for this would contradict what we have had explicitly in a previous chapter as to the seal put upon those who sighed and cried before God for the abominations of the people, and who are, therefore, by this seal itself, put explicitly under the care of God whom they have honored. Nevertheless, the land is swept bare; the righteous and wicked suffer together in this respect. The sword is upon both; only, as we have already seen, and as is simple enough, that which is pure judgment for the one class is only a refining lire for the other, and God is in it carefully superintending the process which is to bring forth a perfect vessel for Himself.

1. First of all, it is insisted that one common doom is to envelop the whole of the land. God will be true to His own, but they cannot save from destruction that which is already devoted to it. God’s wrath is as a devouring fire, which lays hold of all that is before it, and that is the first point. “The word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, Son of man, set thy face towards the south” in which Judah and Jerusalem were), “and drop thy word towards the south, and prophesy against the forest of the south field.” According to the idea here given, the cultivated “field” has, as it were, grown wild, grown into a forest, as we know was the case with Judah. (For a similar thought, the meaning of Kirjath-Jearim, “the city of the woods,” may be compared in Joshua xv: 9. See Notes.) In such a case, the very fertility of the ground, and the care that may once have been bestowed upon it, only helps the luxuriance of the wild growth. It is the common story of perverted privileges and blessing of every kind.

Thus the prophet is to address himself to “the forest of the south.” God is bringing a fire upon it, which is of course the symbol of His wrath, although the wrath must in a sense be discriminative, which the fire is not. This is not a contradiction, however. The external calamity reaches all alike, and the green tree suffers with the dry, but God knows how to turn the suffering itself into blessing for His people, which eternity shall reveal; and in spite of all, as He has Himself said, the man that doeth righteousness shall live thereby. But a flame is devouring the land from south to north. Why the direction here, when the inroad of the enemy was from north to south? It would seem that what is intimated is, what was according to the fact, that the destruction of Jerusalem would scatter the people mainly northward, as it did, and would follow them there.* It was to be the unmistakable evidence of God’s own judgment. God was to be glorified in it when His people were not glorifying, but dishonoring Him. The speech of the prophet, however, is as the people urge, in parables. God was dealing with them after their own fashion, for His plainest warnings had been but words to them; and, shut up in their own unbelief, there seemed no use in speaking more plainly. The ear that was opened would hear; and if it were realized that Jehovah was speaking, the very language of parable would only invite the more to search into the meaning of it.
2. Nevertheless, the word of Jehovah answers the voice of the people, and Ezekiel is instructed to speak plainly, to set his face towards Jerusalem, and drop his word toward the holy places, which, of course, were that no more, but only the witness against those who had destroyed them by their desecration. The prophecy is now to the whole land, and God says plainly that the sword, which they might then see drawn out of its sheath, was the sword of no mortal enemy merely, but His own; and as the fire devoured the green wood and the dry, so He would cut off out of the land the righteous and the wicked. The judgment was, as already declared, to be plainly his judgment. And if we follow Daniel to the court of the king of Babylon, we shall see how God took care to make known, in such a way that the heathen himself had to acknowledge it, His power and majesty, whose sanctuaries Nebuchadnezzar might seem to have overthrown. The king of Babylon was, as the chapter itself declares plainly, but an instrument in the hands of the Almighty who wielded all the power which Nebuchadnezzar would naturally ascribe to himself.

In fact it was this which brought judgment upon him -a judgment which humbled his heart and brought him fully to own the Most High God, while the hearts of His own people remained intractable and rebellious. But it is not without sorrow, such as He never hesitates to attribute to Himself, that God inflicts this inevitable chastisement; and the sighing of the prophet, even with breaking of the loins and bitterness, is but the echo of what is in the heart of Him who bids him give vent thus to his human sorrow. As of old it was said, “In all their affliction He was afflicted,” so it ever is, even when He whose delights are with the sons of men has to manifest Himself against them. The tears of the Lord over Jerusalem, when He took leave of it, witness with the anguish of the prophet. Yet He who wept could not spare; and that which threatened now would melt the heart and enfeeble the hands and make every spirit faint; and it was already upon them: “It cometh, it is even here, saith the Lord Jehovah.” 3. Still, we have to be reminded once more of what is involved in this. It is not simply the judgment of a people, but of a people with whom were the promises of God; and it is this which for the time sets aside those promises, that they cannot be fulfilled. The sons of David, however much in rebellion against God, had nevertheless built themselves up in pride upon these very promises; and the heart of the righteous might plead with Him: Was He going to permit that the sweet assurances He had given be made void? Might they make mirth and say, as if from God’s side of things, “The sceptre of my Son despiseth every tree?”* Could it not make light of all human power, however firmly rooted, which would set itself in opposition against it? “The sceptre of my Son” shows the thought implied. Was it not, according to the second psalm, the One who could declare the decree that Jehovah had said to Him, “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten Thee,” who was appointed to rule upon God’s holy hill of Zion, and the very ends of the earth were to be given into His hands?

And had it not been said in older prophecy, that the sceptre should not depart from Judah and a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh came? (Genesis 49:1-33.) How simple, it seemed, to put such things together, and think of it as faith itself, to resist the conviction of coming judgment. Yet, in spite of this, the prophet affirms that it is coming. The sword of the Lord, He has made it ready, furbished and sharpened it, that it should be as fully as possible effective, and this sword was to be against this people of Jehovah, and against all the princes of Israel; princes and people alike were to be given up to the sword. Yea, the test (in the event) was even now being made; and what if this sceptre that despiseth were actually to be no more? asks the Lord Jehovah.
How readily may His people misinterpret His plain words! How ready are we today to misinterpret them! How often do we hear that “the knowledge of the glory of the Lord is to cover the earth as the waters cover the sea” interpreted as being of course through the spread of Christianity -and this after nearly 2,000 years, which have manifested its incapacity to do this; and not merely this, but exhibited everywhere, as is so plain today, its capacity for decay -yet how many still look for this! And the very word which announces what is plainly opposite to such thoughts is made to confirm them: “Israel shall bud and blossom, and fill the face of the earth with fruit” -and are not we Christians the true Israel? Thus we see the heart searched out in Ezekiel’s day; and here we have a glimpse, as it would seem, that we have not elsewhere, as to the perplexity which must have been in the hearts of many of such a day, faced with all those promises of triumph and blessing of which Scripture is full for them; and then, on the other hand, faced by the prophet now with this assurance of the coming desolation. But God’s word abides, and time will reconcile all these things. What concerned them now was to realize the Lord’s judgment upon His people, and its sure and swift coming. “Son of man, prophesy and smite thy hands together, and let the sword be doubled the third time:” the strokes of it growing only the more terrible to the end -perhaps, if we are to read the number symbolically, until the time of full manifestation. This is the sword which is soon to be busy in its dreadful work, and among the slain, the “great one,” the sword which has penetrated to the king himself who is the “deadly wounded.” Not that Zedekiah was himself slain in the siege or after it: we know he was not. His sons were slain before his eyes, and then those eyes that had been witness of the awful sorrow were put out, that they might see the light no more. As king, he lived no more; and his life after that, was it life?

And still the sword swept on, melting every heart and multiplying the carcases so that men stumbled over them. And there was no escape from it: the threatening sword was against all their gates. Its very glitter was meant by God as prophesying the sure quenching in blood which was to follow. Jehovah turns to it and bids it do its work: gather up its strength, go to the right, turn to the left, finding its work unfailingly wherever it turned, for it could not miss worthy objects. And thus was Jehovah’s wrath: “I will smite my hands together, and I will cause my wrath to rest. I Jehovah have spoken.” 4. The next word of Jehovah contemplates more the human instrument which is implied in all this. The sword is the sword of the king of Babylon, which, even if blindly, is none the less the instrument of the Hand which is over him continually. The prophet marks his course, the path that he is to pursue. He sees him pause, and hesitate, where the one road out of his land separates into two. The one road leads to Rabbah of the Ammonite; the other to Jerusalem, strong in its fortifications.

There he stands at the parting of the way, practising his vain divination, shaking his arrows, inquiring of the teraphim, looking into the liver. In his right hand is the divination for Jerusalem, to lay siege to it. A poor thing in itself, against which men might build themselves up, as mere false divination of the heathen -they who had in Jehovah’s name sworn faithfulness to the king of Babylon and broken their oath! All right to scorn the heathen divination, but what about Jehovah who has been scorned and defied? “He bringeth the iniquity to remembrance that they may be taken.” And thus the divination does not fail. 5. Divine government has not loosed its hand upon men in all this. Nay, it is the very thing that is coming out in its full reality. The “iniquity of the end” (which is bringing about the end) has taken place. The crown is gone from the head of the king of Israel, and the mitre of the high priest, which was supported by the crown, has to go also. That which still existed was to be no more.

The wheel was going round! That which is low is to be exalted; that which is high is to be abased. “I will overturn, overturn, overturn it,” says Jehovah; “and it shall be no more until He come whose right it is, and I will give it Him.” Thus there is even here a gleam through the thunderclouds. All other hands are proved incompetent to wield this sceptre which God is taking for the time being from the line of David. There is One, however, who has right, and who will put forth His claim to it, and Judah’s rod of magistracy would not cease until Shiloh comes. How sweet such a promise to a sorely-stricken heart! How sweet for us in our own day, revealing, as it does, the mystery of the breakdown of all things upon which we rest our human hopes, “until He comes whose right it is!” How we forget this, that the overturning is not something against His right, but contemplates it. Just as Israel’s desolate land with all its desolation speaks of a people for whom it is waiting, in God’s design, so the broken sceptre and the empty throne are only waiting for the One to come who surely will fulfil every promise, and outdo all that the heart can imagine or crave, in the blessing that He brings. There is yet one final word: Ammon had escaped; the enemy of God’s people had gone scot-free. The king of Babylon had turned off to Jerusalem; and the enemy now can insult them as they will. Ammon, as we know, was an ancient enemy of Israel; and, as a type, shows still more the opposition of the heart to that which is of God. We may remind ourselves how in the days of Jephthah, and afterwards in the days of Saul, Ammon stood forth under its king Nahash. “the serpent,” as bent upon taking from Israel the land that was their own. (Judges 11:1-40 and 1 Samuel 11:1-15, Notes.) This is ever the work of the enemy of our souls -not merely to gain a victory over the people of God, but to take from them the very portion which God has given them. Israel’s sins, now at their height, bringing judgment upon them, the desolate land lay open to the attacks of the enemy. But God’s eye is upon it, and Ammon is not to escape.

The sword is to prove itself as Jehovah’s sword in this way also. Misjudging altogether the work of God, as the enemy continually misjudges it, Ammon brings upon himself the wrath in which, as against others, he is rejoicing. “And I will blow upon thee,” says the Lord, “with the fire of my wrath, and deliver thee into the hand of brutish men, skilful to destroy. Thou shalt be for fuel to the fire; thy blood shall be in the midst of the land; thou shalt not be remembered. For I Jehovah have spoken.” Thus, where all seems wreck, and what God has done for His glory seems to have fully shared in this, yet Jehovah’s word stands forth unchanged in its utterance!