Ezekiel 21
PATThe prophet, under the emblem of a sharp sword, foretells the destruction of Judea, and particularly of Jerusalem, and the country of the Ammonites, by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar. ments, as they were represented to the minds of the prophets, did very often affect them with dreadful apprehensions; especially when they concerned their own people. (Sec Jer. xxiii. 9. Dan. viii. 28. Habak. iii. 1G.) Before their eyes.’] Before the eyes of the elders of Israel, (mentioned xx. 1.) or of the Jewish captives, who could not but be touched with a tender sense of the calamities ready to befal their brethren in Judea. Arab. p. 329. where he treats at large of this manner of divination. * He consulted with images.’] The Hebrew reads seraphim’, which word, as it signifies some image or visible representation of a deity, so consequently it must be taken in an ill sense for an idolatrous worship, in which sense it is certainly used 1 Sam. xv. 23. 2 Kings xxiii. 24. Zcch. x. 2. Dr. Spencer takes a great deal of pains to prove that the word is sometimes taken for a sort of Divine oracle, and is equivalent to the urim, by which the high-priest received an answer when he consulted God upon emergent occasions. (See his third book De Legibus Hebr. Dissert, ult. de Urim et Tl’immim.) He looked in the liver.’] This was another noted sort of divination, which was taken from lucky or unlucky tokens which appeared in the entrails of the sacrifices when they were slain, called aruspicina by the Romans.
Ezekiel 21:2
&ET thy face towards Jerusalem. See xx. 46. Drop thy word towards the holy places.] i. e. Towards the sanctuary or temple, and the several courts belonging thereto. (See the note on vii. 24.)
Ezekiel 21:3
I will draw forth my sword out of his sheath. The sword of the king of Babylon, the instrument of my vengeance. (See ver. 19. and xiv. 17.) And will cut off from thee the righteous and the wicked.] The command given by God, (ix. G.) is to slay young and old, both maids, little children, and women; i. e. those that have not been guilty of idolatry and the other national sins, as well as those that have. Only the few mourners mentioned ix. 4. have a promise to escape.* God’s absolute dominion will justify any temporal calamity he thinks fit to bring upon men; and every man is so much a sinner, that no evil which befals him in this world, can be thought unjust with respect to God that inflicts it. But yet, when God punisheth men immediately by himself, as he did in the destruction of the old world, and of Sodom, it may be’expected he should put a difference between the righteous and the wicked; as Abraham argues with him upon this subject, Gen. xviii. 23. 25.
Ezekiel 21:4
Against all flesh from the south to the north. Sec xx. 47;
Ezekiel 21:5
It shall not return any more. Into its sheath, as the sense is more fully expressed, ver. 30. till it has executed my commands. Ver. G. Sigh therefore with the breaking of thy loins, &c] Shew all the tokens of grief and concern; (compare ver. 13. 17.) and let the sense of these impending judgments so deeply affect thee, as to make thee stoop, like one that is perfectly bowed down under the weight of them. (Compare Psal. xxxv. 14. xxxviii. 5. Isa. xxi. 3.) God’s judg-
Ezekiel 21:7
Every heart shall melt, and all hands shall be feeble, &c. Men’s hearts and strength shall fail them for fear. (See vii. 17.)
Ezekiel 21:10
Should ive then make mirth?. Men that are hardened in’ sin arc apt to laugh at God’s judgments, and at those who give warning of them. This may be applied to those who spake peace unto the people, when there was no peace, (xiii.10.) It contemneth the rod of my son, as every tree.’] It makes no distinction between the sceptre and common wood; between the branches of the royal family, descended from David arid Solomon, whom I honoured with the title of being my sons, (2 Sara. vii. 14. Psal. lxxxix. 2G.) and the meanest of the people. (See ver. 12. 25—27. xix. 11. 14.)
Ezekiel 21:11
It is furbished, to give it into the hand of the slayer. Of the king of Babylon, the executioner of God’s judgments upon Judea. (Ver. 19.) Ver; 12. It shall be upon my people, it shall be upon all the prince^ of Israel.] Both princes and people shall be involved in one common destruction. Concerning the princes of Israel, see the note upon xxii. 6. Smite therefore upon thy thigh.] Use all the outward expressions of grief and mourning. (Compare ver. 6. 14. 17. vi. 11. xxxi. 19.)'
Ezekiel 21:13
Because it is a trial. As all great calamities are styled, (Job ix. 23. 2 Cor. viii. 2. Heb. xi. 36.) And what if the sword contemn even the rod?] The sceptre and royal family. (See ver. 10.) It shall be no more, saith the Lord.] See ver. 27.
Ezekiel 21:14
Smite thy hands together. See’Numb.xxiv.10. and ver. 12. of this chapter. And let the sword be doubled the third time.] The expression may import, first, the slaughter made at the siege; then those that were slain at the taking of the city; in which number may bfe reckoned the sons of Zedekiah, as also the chief priests and principal officers of state, who were taken and put to death immediately afterward: (see ver. 14. and 2 Kings xxv. 7. 18—21.) to these may be added, in the third place, those who were slain with Gedaliah, (Jer. xli. 2, 3.) But perhaps the expression, Let the sword be doubled a third time, may mcantio more than if the prophet had said; Let the stroke be repeated tivice and thrice, t. e: oftentimes. So that phrase is used Job xxxiii. 29. All these things worketh God twice and thrice with man, where our translation very fitly expresses the sense oftentimes. A form of speech much like those elsewhere used, For three transgressions and for four, Amos’i. 3. * Give a portion to seven, yea also to eight, Eccles. xi. 2. It is the sxvord of the great men that are slain, which entereth into their privy chambers.] Whither they went’ to hide themselves. (See 1 Kings xxii. 25.)
Ezekiel 21:15
I have set the point of the sword against all their gates. The word ibchath, translated the point; is to be found but in this one place of the Bible, and so is variously rendered by interpreters. Dr. Castell understands it of the destruction made by the sword, from the use of the word in the Ethiopic language. It is made bright.] The Hebrew reads here and ver. 10. It is made like lightning; the same metaphor which we read in Virgil, JEn. iv. " Vaginaque eripit ensem Fulmineum.,> He drew his sword, ivhich did like lightning blaze. It is wrapped up for the slaughter.] Or rather, It is sharpened for the slaughter, as the Chaldee translates menuttah, which is derived from the noun net, signifying an iron pen or stiletto. Ver. 1G. Go thee one way or other.] Tho words are directed to the sword, implying that God hath given it a large commission to go through the land without any restraint. (See xiv. 17.) On the right hand, or on the left.] Either to the south, or to the north, (ver. 4.) Those two quarters of the world being expressed in the Hebrew language by the right and left. (See the note on xvi. 46.)
Ezekiel 21:17
I will also smite my hands together. To express my just indignation at their provocations. (See ver. 14. xxii. 13.) And I will cause my fury to rest.] See the note on v. 13.
Ezekiel 21:19
Appoint thee two ways, that the sword of the king of Babylon may come. God foreshows his prophet that the king of Babylon, coming with his army into Syria, and finding that the Ammonites had entered into a confederacy with Egypt, as well as Zedekiah, he was in doubt against which* of the two people he should first make war, and committed the decision of this matter to his arts of divination, described ver. 21.
Ezekiel 21:20
Tliat the sxvord may come to Rabbath of the Ammonites. Rabbath, otherwise called Rabbah, (xxv. 5.) was the chief city of the Ammonites. (See 2 Sam. xii. 2G. Jer. xlix. 2.) In Jerusalem the defenced.] Which had been strongly fortified, first by David, “(2 Sam. v. 9.) then by Solomon, (1 Kings ix. 24.) afterward by Hezekiah, (2 Chron. xxxii. 5.) and then’by Manasseh, (ibid, xxxiii. 14.)
Ezekiel 21:21
For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way — to use divination; he made his arrows bright. This way of divining by arrows is thus described by St. Jerome in his commentary upon this place: " They wrote on several arrows the names of the cities they intended to assault; and then putting them altogether promiscuously in* a quiver, they drew them out thence as lots are drawn; and that city whose name was writ on the arrow first drawn, was the city they first made war upon.” Perhaps from this custom the verb hatsah, or liatsats, from whence hets, an arrow, is derived, comes to signify the parting or dividing any thing by lot, in which sense it is used Job xli. G. Prov. xxx. 27. He made his arrows bright.] Or rather, he mingled his arrows, as the Vulgar Latin translates it; which sense of the verb kilkal agrees better with the description of this kind of divination already given; and therefore is preferred by Dr. Pocock, who confirms this exposition from the Arabic use of the word. See his notes in Specim. Hist, #
Ezekiel 21:22
At his right hand was the divination for Jerusalem.* When the king of Babylon stood at the head of two ways, (ver. 21.) to consult which of the two he should take, the tokens that were shewed him, persuaded him to march with his army to the right, i. e. towards Jerusalem. To appoint captains, to open the mouth in slaughter, to lift up the voice, with shouting.] Whose office it was to encourage the army to fall upon their enemies, and destroy them. (See Jer. 1. 15.) To cast a mount.] See Jer. xxxii. 24.
Ezekiel 21:23
And it shall be unto them as a false divination in their sight, to them that have sworn oaths. The king of Judea and his courtiers will despise all these preparations of war, though directed against them, as if they were grounded upon the false arts of divination; whereas it is indeed God himself that directs the march of the Chaldean army, to revenge the perjury which Zedekiah and his counsellors were guilty of, in breaking that solemn oath of fealty which he made to the king of Babylon. (See xvii. But he will call to remembrance iniquity, that they may be taken;] Nebuchadnezzar will remember ■ Zedekiah’s breach of his oath, and revenge himself by taking the city, and making him and his subjects prisoners of war.
Ezekiel 21:24
Because ye have made your iniquity to be remembered — ye shall be taken with the hand. Because your sins cry to heaven for vengeance, ye shall fall into the hands and power of the king of Babylon.
Ezekiel 21:25
And thou, profane wicked prince of Israel. The words are directed to Zedekiah, whom the prophet calls profane and wicked, chiefly with respect to his breaking that solemn oath uttered in the name of God, whereby he had engaged himself to be tributary to the king of Babylon. (Sec xvii. 19.) With God is no respect of persons; in like manner, when the prophets speak to kings in the name of God, they lay aside those titles and expressions of respect which arc otherwise due to the regal dignity. (See 1 Sam. xiii. 13. 1 Kings xviii. 18. 2 Kings iii. 13, 14.) Whose day is come, when iniquity shall have an end.] The day of whose calamity is near at hand, when his and his people’s iniquity shall receive their just doom. (Compare vii. G. xxx. 3. xxxv. 5.) Ver. 2G, Remove the diadem, and take off the crown.] The words crown and diadem are equivalent, and put to signify the kingjy ornaments of dignity. (See Isa. lxii. 3.) Indeed the crown is elsewhere taken for the emblem of sovereignty, and the diadem or mitre for the proper ornament of the priesthood, and so the Chaldee paraphrase expresses the sense. of the verse in these words, Remove the mitre from Seraiah the chief priest, and I ivill take away the crown from Zedekiali the king. But I conceive this sense does not so well agree with the design of the place, where the judgment threatened is spoken only of Zedekiah. Tfiis shall not be the same: exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high.] Things shall t not continue in their present state; as Zedekiah shall be brought down from his kingly dignity, so another branch of that family (viz. Christ, see ver. 27.) shall be advanced, from an obscure original and low condition, to the supreme degree of sovereignty. (Compare xvii. 24.)
Ezekiel 21:27
I will overturn— it; and it shall be no more, until he come whose.right it is; and I will give it him.* After that Zedekiah is deprived of his regal authority,; there shall be ho more kings of that family till Christ come, the King so often foretold and.promised, who in. due time shall reign upon the throne of his father David,. and of whose kingdom there shall be no end, (Luke i. 32, 33.) After the captivity, some of the priests of the Assamonean? race did assume the style and title of kings; but they not being of the tribe of Judati, could have no just right to. that honour.. Until he come whose right it is.] In this sense the LXX.’ understand the word Shiloh, Gen. xlix. 10. translating it. there, r CU airoKUTai, To whom it is reserved: as if that Hebrew word were equivalent to sheloh, whose it is, as the learned P. Fagius hath observed in his notes upon the: Targum of that text.
Ezekiel 21:28
Thus saith the Lord God concerning the Am- 9 monites, and concerning their reproach. They insulted over the calamities of their brethren the Jews, for which they are often reproved Very severely by the prophets, and threatened with the like judgments. (See xxv. 2. 6. Zeph. ii. 8. 10.)
Ezekiel 21:29
Wldles they see vanity unto thee, whiles they divine a lie unto thee.* While the soothsayers and pretenders to divination foretell nothing but happy events, (See xiii.. 23. xxii. 28.) To bring thee upon the necks of them that are slahi] To, add thee to the number of those who are slain in Judea: (ver. 14, 15.) and make thy condition like theirs. m Of the wicked, whose day is come.] See ver. 25.
Ezekiel 21:30
Shall I cause it to return into his sheath?. See ver. 4, 5. I will judge thee in the place where thou wast created.] Thou shalt not be carried qaptive, but shalt be destroyed, in thine own land. (See ver. 32.)
Ezekiel 21:31
Iwill blow against thee in the fire of my wrath. Compare xxii. 20—22.
Ezekiel 21:32
TJiou shalt be no more remembered. See xxv. 10,