1

hard language art thou sent,-to the house of Israel. 6. Not to many nations of obscure speech and hard language, whose words thou dost not understand. Surely had I sent thee to them, they would have listened to thee. 7. And the house of Israel will not be willing to hearken to thee; for they are not willing to hearken to me; for all the house of Israel are of an hard forehead, and a stiff heart. 8. Behold I make thy face hard against their faces, and thy forehead hard against their foreheads. 9. As an adamant harder than flint I make thy forehead; thou shalt not be afraid of them, nor be confounded at their looks; for they are a rebellious house. 10. And he said to me, son of man, all my words that I shall speak to thee, receive in thy heart, and hear with thine ears. 11. And get thee away to the captives, to the children of thy people, and speak to them and say to them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear.

The most striking thing in this section is the strong delineation that is given of the backslidden state, and confirmed degeneracy of the people. Not only are they compared to such things as briers and scorpions, but, with painful and emphatic reiteration, they are declared to be altogether infected with the spirit of rebellion, setting their face, with determined and insolent effrontery, against the will and purposes of Heaven. No doubt the description is to be taken with some limitation, as applicable in its full sense to the greater portion of the captives, though not absolutely to the whole. But that such a general description should have been given of them by the God of truth, was a clear indication that they were in a most sunk and degraded condition, and that the remnant who were animated by a better spirit, must have been comparatively few.

How distinguished a proof of covenant love and faithfulness in God, that he should condescend to deal with such a people, and send a prophet yet again to instruct them! And for that prophet, what an arduous and vexing enterprise, to prosecute among them the business of a faithful ambassador of heaven!

But to render him more fully alive to what awaited him in this respect, a symbolical action was added. Looking up, he saw a hand stretched out toward him, and in the hand the roll of a book, written within and without, but written only "with lamentations, and mourning, and woe." This was significant of the heavy tidings which were to form the chief burden of his communications to the people. For, broken and afflicted as they

1 The expressions are literally, "deep of lip, and heavy of tongue," which can only mean obscurity of speech, and language hard to be understood-a foreign tongue.

already were in their condition, they were not yet weaned from their false hopes, nor had they reached the darkest period of their history. Troubles and calamities still more disastrous than those which had yet been experienced, were needed to crush their proud and refractory spirit; and in such a time of spiritual disorder and corruption, it was only through a season of midnight darkness that light could arise to the church of God. Therefore, the prophetic roll delivered into the hands of Ezekiel, was necessarily much written with the dark forebodings of tribulation and sorrow. And as God's representative at such a time, and to such a people, he must eat it (chap. iii. 1, 2), not, of course, literally, swallow the roll, but so receive and appropriate its unsavoury contents, that these should infuse themselves, as it were, into his very moisture and blood, and imbue his soul with a feeling of their reality and importance. Hence the bitter as well as the sweet which followed in the experience of the prophet (chap. iii. 3, 14),—“sweet as honey in his mouth," yet afterwards causing him to go "in bitterness, in the heat of his spirit;" bitter indeed, because he had to announce a message and prosecute a work which was to be peculiarly painful and arduous; but sweet notwithstanding, because it was the Lord's service in which he was to be engaged, and a service which had the full consent and approval of his own mind. It was sweet to be the representative and agent of the Most High, however contrary to flesh and blood might be the special embassy on which he was sent; as Jeremiah also says, chap. xv. 16, "I found thy words, and ate them; and thy words were to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart: for I am called by thy name, O Lord God of Hosts." "The action denotes that the prophet, being carried in a manner out of himself, entered into the room of God; and divesting himself of carnal affection, rising into the region of pure and spiritual contemplation, whatever the will of God might call him to do for magnifying the justice as well as goodness of God, he was thoroughly to approve in his own mind, and derive pleasure from the words of God, whatever might be the tenor of their announcements." In short, like every true reformer, and every faithful ambassador of Heaven, it must henceforth be his to count God's glory his own highest good,

1

1 Vitringa in Apoc., p. 441, on Chap. x. 8-11.

and to make all subordinate to the one end, of fulfilling with joy the ministry he had received from above.

And most nobly did this man of God execute his high commission, proving himself to be an Ezekiel indeed a man strengthened with the might of God-a most powerful and effective instrument of divine working. In the resolute and devoted spirit of his pious ancestry, "he said not unto his father and to his mother, I have seen them; neither did he acknowledge his brethren, nor know his own children, that he might teach Jacob thy judgments, and Israel thy law," (Deut. xxxiii. 9). How valiantly did his heroic bearing rebuke the spirit of despondency, and against hope still inspire the hope of better days to come! And even now, when he has so long since rested from his labours, may it not be an instructive and soul-refreshing thing to look back upon the struggle which he so vigorously maintained—to see him lifting his giant form above the deep waters of adversity that surrounded him, and the more the evil prevailed, raising himself, in God's name, to a more determined and strenuous resistance against it! In such a spiritual hero, we recognise a sign of the ever-during strength and perpetual revirescence of the cause of God, which, like its Divine author, carries in its bosom the element of eternity-survives all changes -amid all death, lives. If this cause should appear for a season to decline and languish, let us never doubt that it shall again rise into prosperity. Its winters are sure to be succeeded by returning springs. And standing, as it pre-eminently does, in the righteous principles, which have a witness and an echo in every bosom, there only needs the consecrated energies of courageous hearts and strenuous arms, like those of Ezekiel, to raise it from the most oppressed condition, and infuse into it the energy of a renovated life. Lord God of Ezekiel, imprint the image of this thy faithful and devoted servant deep upon our hearts! Let the thought of his holy daring and triumphant faith put to shame our cowardice and inaction! And do thou find for thyself, in these days of evil, many who shall be willing, like him, to make Heaven's cause their own, and shall count nothing so dear to them as its prosperity and progress!

CHAPTER III. 12-27.

EZEKIEL'S ENTRANCE ON HIS MISSION, AND THE FIRST MESSAGE IMPARTED TO HIM.

Verse 12. And the Spirit lifted me up, and I heard behind me the voice of a loud tumultuous noise, "Blessed be the glory of Jehovah from his place." 13. And I heard the noise of the wings of the living creatures embracing each other, and the noise of the wheels over against them, and the voice of a loud tumultuous noise. 14. And the Spirit lifted me up, and laid hold of me, and I went in bitterness, in the heat of my spirit; and the hand of Jehovah was strong upon me. 15. And I came to the captives at Tel-abib, that were dwelling (or sitting) by the river Chebar, and I beheld them dwelling there; and I sat down there seven days (i. e. in lonely and silent grief) among them. 16. And it came to pass at the end of the seven days, that the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, 17. Son of man, I have set thee a watchman to the house of Israel; and thou shalt hear the word at my mouth,

1 This clause has from an early period been felt to be a difficulty, and given rise to different modes of solution. The Jewish critics could not find their way to the interpretation, as is evident by their suggesting for of the text, the Kris, which has been adopted by our translators: “And I sat where they sat." Various conjectures, though not of a satisfactory kind, have been resorted to, with a view of making out a somewhat similar meaning from the text. Rosenmuller's, for example, by ascribing to the sense of the Chaldean N, and Maurer's, who would identify it with s. Hävernick would take it simply for the relative, and renders the clause, “And those who were settled there," that is, as he supposes, the older class of settlers, as contradistinguished from the more recent ones, who were mentioned in the preceding clause, as sitting down or settling beside the Chebar. But the distinction, it must be confessed, is very faintly marked, if two separate companies were meant, and there is no difference of time noted in the verbs. I incline, on the whole, to agree with Hitzig, that the pointing should be from the verb to see or behold. (For similar cases he refers to 1 Kings iii. 21; Zech. vi. 1; Lev. xx. 23; and for , in the sense of them, Jer. xlvi. 5). The prophet first went to them, then saw their condition, and lastly sat down in pensive solitude, giving vent to his grief; for such the verb imports, rather than being astonished. As for the idea of Häv., that the older settlers, whom he supposes to be mentioned here, were the captives of the ten tribes, and that the Habor in 2 Kings xvii. 6, is but another name for the Chaboras, it is against all probability. The region of the captivity of the ten tribes is said to have been in the "cities of the Medes," and by "the river Gozan,"-viz., the Kissilozan, that runs into the Caspian.

and give them warning from me. 18. When I say to the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou dost not warn him, and dost not speak to warn the wicked away from his wicked way that he may live, he, that is wicked, shall die in his iniquity, and his blood will I require at thy hand. 19. And thou, if thou dost warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, and from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; and thou hast delivered thine own soul. 20. And when a righteous man turns from his righteousness, and commits iniquity, and I lay a stumbling-block before him (i. e. appoint for him an occasion and instrument of rebuke), he shall die; because thou didst not warn him, he shall die in his sin, and his righteousness which he has done shall not be remembered, and his blood will I require at thy hand. 21. And thou, if thou dost warn the righteous, that the righteous should not sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live; for he was warned, and thou hast delivered thine own soul.

Verse 22. And the hand of Jehovah was upon me there; and he said to me, Arise, go forth into the plain, and there I will speak with thee. 23. And I arose, and went forth into the plain: and, behold, there the glory of the Lord stood, as the glory which I saw by the river Chebar: and I fell on my face. 24. And the Spirit came into me, and made me stand upon my feet, and spake with me, and said to me, Go, shut thyself within thy house. 25. And thou son of man, behold, they lay bands upon thee, and bind thee with them, that thou mayest not go forth amongst them. 26. And I will make thy tongue cleave to the roof of thy mouth, and thou shalt be dumb, and shalt not be to them for a reprover; for they are a rebellious house. 27. And when I speak to thee, I will open thy mouth, and thou shalt say to them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, let him hear that will hear, and let him forbear that will forbear; for they are a rebellious house.

THIS section, which should have formed a separate chapter, records the entrance of Ezekiel on his high vocation, and contains the first message delivered to him respecting it. His former place of abode, it would seem, was not the most advantageously situated for prosecuting, with success, the work committed to him; and, in consequence, he removed to Tel-abib, which is nowhere else mentioned, but was, in all probability, the best peopled locality, or the chief town of the Jewish colony. When he came and saw the captives dwelling there, in a dejected and mournful condition, he sat down among them for seven days continuously-sitting being the common attitude of grief (Ezra ix. 3; Lam. i. 1-3), and seven days being the usual period for the manifestation of the heaviest sorrow (Job ii. 13). By thus spending, at the outset, so many days of desolation and sadness, he gave proof of his deep fellow-feeling with his exiled brethren in their depressed condition, and showed how entirely he entered into their state. Thus sorrowing in their sorrow, and breathing the tenderness of a sympathising spirit toward them, he sought to win their confidence, and secure