Ezekiel 35

Ezekiel 35:1-15

Section 2 (Ezekiel 35:1-15).The enemy answered. We have now a prophecy of a wholly different character; it is a natural corollary of what we have had before us. Israel are now the people of God. But “was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” It is God’s own challenge to Israel in Malachi: “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the Lord. Yet I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness. Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the Lord of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the Lord hath indignation forever. And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, The Lord will be magnified from the border of Israel” (Malachi 1:2-5).

This is the question which comes up here, Esau was Jacob’s brother. Were they so unlike each other after all?

Was he not Jacob “the supplanter?” -the man with the hand upon the heel of his brother; the man always intent upon his own gain and little careful as to his means of acquirement; the man who believed in himself and who, if he cannot fully trust God, must act for himself? whose motto, “God helps those who help themselves” has had wide circulation. It is but the picture of a fallen being, and Jacob was such, we know. Are any of us different? We may take comfort then that God can yet say: “I loved Jacob!” Nay, that He can call Himself “The God of Jacob,” which is but another way of saying, The God of grace. Jacob has another name, as we know, but that is what he is by the work of God, by that only. This “worm” Jacob can only by divine fashioning become a threshing instrument which shall “thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and make the hills as chaff “. (Isaiah 41:15).

Upon these two names, Jacob and Israel, God dwells in contrast all through their history. It is the history essentially of every soul that has learnt what divine grace is; as Esau’s, on the other hand, is the history of a soul that has never learnt grace, and whose misery is this, not only that he has never learnt it, but resists it. This lesson, which God is holding up before us all, Esau might have learnt, but did not. God has sworn that He has no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, and Ezekiel has borne witness to this. But He has but one way of acceptance and blessing, and not another; and he that will not learn this must be without the blessing, akin as he may be naturally, as indeed he is, to his brother that has obtained it. But thus there arises the perpetual grudge and enmity that the Edomite has against the Israelite, and it is an enmity which is really to God, to God’s thoughts and ways. Thus we need not wonder if it come into special consideration here, just when Israel comes into his blessing, which is also the time when Edom is finally cast out. The prophet is instructed to set his face against Mount Seir and prophesy against it, and say: “Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I am against thee, Mount Seir, and I will stretch out my hand upon thee, and will make thee a desolation astonishment.” Mount Seir is Edom’s possession, a “rough,” or “rugged place,” as the word means. Esau has chosen for himself; therefore he has not chosen well. Does ever any one choose well who chooses for himself? When Abram stood with Lot in the land which God had told him was to be his by divine gift, the man of faith could say in the liberality which comes from faith, “Is not the whole land before thee? Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me: if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right: or if thou depart to the left hand, then I will go to the right,” but Lot was of another mind: “Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan that it was well watered everywhere, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah -even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar. Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan; and Lot journeyed east: and they separated themselves the one from the other” (Genesis 13:9-11).

Alas, they were separated by more than locality, and we know the after-history of Lot’s fatal choice. In a sense, God was before him also.

This plain of Jordan was it not like the Garden of God? All this that spoke so alluringly to his heart, was it not of God, and good? Why should he not enjoy what God had made so manifestly for enjoyment? Alas, how is it that we can forget how sin has disordered everything, even to the very eyes that look upon things now? And Lot chose, as we know, what did not become to him a Mount Seir only because God had mercy towards him -only that God forbade it to be that to him! Lot was to be driven out, as he was driven out, and that was God’s mercy to him; but Edom, the profane person, had chosen in deliberate profaneness, and Mount Seir accordingly was his. Alas, when God has to give according to one’s own desire merely, and not according to what would be for His heart a gift! Mount Seir was Esau’s choice; yet it could not, after all, remain his. The things that we choose naturally are things which cannot abide because we would have them do so; for there is a judgment of God which may follow, though we see it not, of which we may be warned and yet have no eyes to see. And Edom was to know that God is Jehovah, the true and unchanging God in what He threatens, as in what He promises. Yet the portion of Jacob invited Edom too. But the kind of craving he had for it only stirred in his heart as enmity against its possessor; and thus Edom is the typical enemy of Israel through all his history.

That is the point here: “Because thou hast had perpetual enmity, and hast given over the children of Israel to the power of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time of the iniquity of the end; therefore, as I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, I will appoint thee to blood, and blood shall pursue thee. Since thou hast not hated blood, therefore blood shall pursue thee.” We have already had this in brief in a former prophecy, but God returns to dwell upon it for the lesson that is in it, a lesson that we may all well ponder. He that will nurse enmity in his soul shall be himself pursued by the enmity that he nurses, and when this is enmity to God and to His grace, however he may disguise it, it will necessarily be judged as such, and the end is sure. Edom is the ancient infidel as to God. He sees Israel’s land, but he does not see Jehovah’s presence in it. Thus he thinks to possess himself of that in which he finds Jehovah as his adversary, and the bitter fruit of his unbelief is made good to him as what he has indeed chosen, little as he knew the character of his choice.

Was there not plenty in Israel to provoke righteous wrath against them? Yes, and God had to show this as against their misdeeds. But the enemy’s wrath is not righteous; it is of another character. It is against Jehovah at bottom, as all unbelief is; and this is what comes out in result here. The question is not between Edom and Israel, but between Edom and God. If they said of the mountains of Israel that they were desolate, was it not true? But they did not discern the difference between chastening and rejection: therefore they said, “They are given us to devour.” But if Israel can for the time cast themselves out of the very land that is their own, Edom can never enjoy it: “Ye have magnified yourselves against Me with your mouth, and have multiplied your words against Me. I have heard it.

Thus saith the Lord Jehovah; When the whole earth rejoiceth, I will make thee a desolation. As thou didst rejoice over the inheritance of the house of Israel because it was desolate, so will I do unto thee. Thou shalt be a desolation, O Mount Seir, and all Edom, the whole of it; and they shall know” -what a wail there is once more in this, “they shall know -that I am Jehovah.”