warning makes itself heard as "the voice of one crying in the wilderness;" for he sees everywhere around him trackless deserts where ways of God need to be opened up-clements of corruption working, which require to be purged away by the searching application of divine righteousness, before the Canaan of God's inheritance can be properly entered and enjoyed. And the lukewarm and fruitless professor still-so long as he cleaves to the ways of iniquity, and refuses to yield a hearty surrender to the will of God-what else is his condition? He is in bondage to the elements of the world, and therefore can have no part in the Lord's inheritance, that floweth with milk and honey. The doom of Heaven's condemnation hangs suspended over his head; and if not averted by a timely submission to the righteousness of God, and a cordial entrance into the bond of the covenant, he shall infallibly perish in the wilderness of sin and death.

CHAPTER V. VI.

THE VISION OF THE SHORN HAIR AND ITS FORESHADOWING DESOLATIONS.

Chap. v. 1. And thou, son of man, take thee a sharp sword; a barber's razor shalt thou take to thee, and cause it to pass over thy head, and over thy beard; and take the weighing-balances, and divide them (i. e. the hairs). 2. A third part thou shalt burn with fire in the midst of the city, when the days of the siege are accomplished; and thou shalt take the third part, to smite with the sword round about it; and the third part (viz., the remaining third part) thou shalt scatter in the wind and I will draw out a sword after them. 3. And take of them a few in number, and bind them in thy skirts. 4. And take of them again, and cast them into the midst of the fire, and burn them in the fire; from it (i. e. from the fire, emblem of God's righteous judgment) shall go forth a fire to all the house of Israel. 5. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, This is Jerusalem in the midst of the nations did I set her, and the countries were round about her. 6. And she rebelled against my judgments, for wickedness' (i. e. to increase their wickedness, to have it) above the heathen, and against my statutes, more than the countries that were round about her; for they have refused my judgments, and in my statutes they have not walked. 7. Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah,

The authorised version, along with some, both ancient and modern, expositors, have rendered this clause, “And hath changed my judgments into wickedness." But the verb never signifies to change. It is always used

Because ye have acted more outrageously than the heathen1 which were round about you, have not walked in my statutes, and my judgments have not kept, nor have done according to the judgments of the nations that were round about you; 8. Therefore, thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I am against thee, even I, and I will execute judgments in the midst of thee, in the sight of the heathen. 9. And I will do in thee that which I have not done, and the like of which I shall not do any more, because of all thine abominations. 10. Therefore, fathers shall eat their sons in the midst of thee, and sons shall eat their fathers; and I shall execute judgments upon thee, and the whole remnant of thee will I scatter to every wind. 11. Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, surely, because thou hast defiled my sanctuary with all thy detestable things, and with all thine abominations, I also will withdraw, and mine eye shall not spare, neither also will I have any pity. 12. A third part of thee shall die of the pestilence, and with famine shall they be consumed in the midst of thee: and the third part shall fall by the sword round about thee; and the third part will I scatter to every wind, and will draw out the sword after them. 13. And mine anger is accomplished, and I will make my fury to rest upon them, and am comforted; and they know that I, Jehovah, have spoken in my zeal, while I expend my fury upon them. 14. And I will make thee a desolation, and a reproach among the nations, which are round about thee, in the sight of all that pass by. 15. And it shall be a reproach and a taunt, an instruction and an astonishment, to the nations that are round about thee, when I shall have executed in thee judgments in anger,

in the sense of resisting, rebelling against, or something similar; and is often, as here, coupled with the accusative of the object against which the resistance is made, the Lord's word, or statutes, Numb. xx. 24; 1 Sam. xii. 15; Jer. iv. 17, etc. The sin of the Israelites lay, not in changing the Lord's statutes, but, from their prevailing wickedness, setting them aside, and so exceeding the heathen in guilt.

here, is that given by Gesenius,

1 Probably the precise meaning of in his Thes. tumultuamini, ye tumultuate; and this sense we substantially adopt; though the meaning given in the received translation is entitled to regard, and makes an intelligible sense. The children of Israel had "multiplied," or heaped up, in the line here referred to by the prophet, above the heathen; that is, had outdone them in iniquity. The verb certainly is not found in this sense, but its derivative,, is often used for multitude or heaps, only with the collateral idea of noise or turmoil. And as it seems probable, that the tendency of a multitude to cause such noise or turmoil was the reason of the noun coming to have the sense of multitude, we rather incline to take the verb in the same sense. It also agrees well with what was said before, about their doing the part of rebels; as such they raged, or did outrageously.

2 This is the proper meaning of the verb ; and, though it may seem here to be used somewhat abruptly, yet if viewed, as it should be, with reference to Deut. iv. 2, where the people were forbidden to withdraw any thing from God's statutes, its propriety and force will be manifest. They had now withdrawn from God's sanctuary all its sacredness, and in return he withdraws from them- namely, his favour and protection, life and blessing.

and in fury, and in vehement rebukes—I, Jehovah, have spoken it. 16. When I shall send upon them the evil arrows of famine, which are for their destruction, which I shall send to destroy you; and I will increase famine upon you, and will break for you the staff of bread. 17. And I will send upon you famine, and evil beasts, and they shall bereave thee; and pestilence and blood shall pass through thee; and I will bring the sword upon thee,-I Jehovah have spoken it.'

Chap. vi. 1. And the word of Jehovah came to me saying: 2. Son of man, set thy face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophecy against them and say, 3. Ye mountains of Israel hear the word of the Lord Jehovah ; Thus saith the Lord Jehovah to the mountains and to the hills, to the rivers and to the valleys: Behold I, even I am bringing a sword upon you, and I will destroy your high-places; 4. And your altars shall be desolate, and your images shall be broken; and I will make your slain to fall before your idols; 5. And I will lay the carcases of the children of Israel before their idols, and scatter their bones round about your altars. 6. In all the places of your abode the cities shall be laid waste, and the high-places shall be desolate; that your altars may be laid waste and made desolate, and your idols be broken and abolished, and your images be cut down, and your works be extirpated. 7. And the slain shall fall in the midst of you; and ye shall know that I am Jehovah. 8. And I will leave a remnant, in that there shall be some escaped to you from the sword, among the nations, when ye are scattered among the countries. 9. And those of you that escape shall remember me among the heathen, whither they shall be led captive, whose wanton heart, that departeth from me, I will break, and their eyes that lust after their idols; and they shall loathe themselves for the evils which they have done in respect to all their abominations. 10. And they shall know that I, Jehovah, have not in vain declared, that I would bring this evil upon them. 11. Thus saith the Lord

Jehovah, smite with thy hand, and stamp with thy foot, and say, Ah! to all the vile abominations of the house of Israel! that they shall fall by the sword, by the famine, and the pestilence. 12. He that is far off shall die by the pestilence, and he that is near shall fall by the sword, and he that remains and is besieged shall die by the famine; and I will accomplish my fury upon them. 13. And ye shall know that I am Jehovah, when their slain shall be among their idols, round about their altars, at every high hill, upon all the tops of the mountains, and under every green tree, and under every thick oak; the place where they offered sweet savour to all their idols. 14. And I stretch out my hand upon them, and make the land desolate, and a desolation more than the wilderness toward Diblath,2 in all the places of their abode; and they shall know that I am Jehovah.

In the vision of the siege and the iniquity-bearing, a heavy burden of troubles, partly in progress, and partly still impending,

1 Very characteristic, in the latter part of this chapter, of Ezekiel's style, are the frequent transitions from the objective to the subjective, and inversely: they and you, it and thou, alternating with each other; also the tendency to repeat over and over again the same thought, and even the same expressions, for the sake of deepening the impression.

2 It is not certain what precise district is referred to by the name of Diblath. We read elsewhere of the cities, that had Diblathaim as part of their names (Numb. xxxiii. 46; Jer. xlviii. 22); but not of any wilderness so designated. It is needless to notice the different conjectures which have been thrown out upon the subject, for no certain result has been attained.

had been announced by the prophet as determined against the covenant-people. The afflictions of Egypt and the trials of the wilderness were, in a manner, to pass over them again. But even that was not enough; for as their guilt exceeded the guilt of their forefathers, so the chastisement now to be received from the hand of God was to surpass all that had been experienced in the history of the past. This more severe message is unfolded in the next vision, that recorded in these chapters-in which the prophet is commanded (after having finished the days of the siege, i. e., spent in vision, not in real life, the time during which it was to be prosecuted) to take a sharp sword, and also a razor, to shave off the whole hair of his head and beard-itself a symbol of violent and humiliating treatment. For the priests were enjoined to nourish their hair, and avoid baldness, in token of their peculiar consecration to the Lord (Lev. xxi. 5). Therefore, to have this hair, which was at once the natural ornament of the head and the symbol of its sacredness, cut off by an instrument of war, plainly bespoke a work of severe and desolating judgment. But the same was still more strikingly indicated by the use to be made of the hair—of which one-third part was to be burned in the fire, another smitten about with a sword, and the last scattered to the winds, and pursued by a drawn sword. A few of this last division the prophet was instructed to bind in the skirts of his garment, in token of safe preservation; for even of these, a portion only were to be saved, while others were to be again cast into the fire and burned, a flame issuing from the conflagration which was to "come forth against all the house of

Israel."

In these last words, which form the conclusion of ver. 4, the description of the symbol, as sometimes happens in the prophets, passes into the reality, the house of Israel being substituted for the hairs which represented it. . This is followed, however, by an express and pointed application of the different parts of the vision to the circumstances and prospects of the covenant-people. Jerusalem, we are again told, was the object of the whole; but Jerusalem, as in the former vision, standing for the people at large, of which it was the proper centre and natural representative. For the prophet presently proceeds to speak of this Jerusalem as a people set in the midst of surrounding heathen; and in the two following chapters, which are merely a con

tinuation and further enlargement of what is contained in chap. v., we find substituted for the name of Jerusalem, "the mountains of Israel," "the land of Israel," and "the children of Israel." There can be no doubt, therefore, that the prophecy has the most extensive bearing, and that we are no more in this case, than in that of the siege, to think of the single city Jerusalem-though, from being the appointed centre of the whole, both the city itself, and that portion of the people more immediately connected with it, might expect their full share in the judgments announced.

The judgments themselves are distributed into three classes, according to the threefold division of the hair; the sword was to devour one-third of the people; famine and pestilence, another; and that which remained was to be scattered among the nations. The strongest language is employed to describe the calamities. indicated under these various heads, and everything is introduced. that might have the effect of conveying the most appalling idea of the coming future. Amid the horrors to be produced by famine and pestilence, the dreadful words of Moses, that "their fathers should eat their sons in the midst of them," are reiterated, with the addition of the still darker feature, that "the sons. should also eat their fathers" (ver. 10). The wild beasts of the field, too, were to embitter by their ravages the calamities produced by the evil arrows of famine; and the sword was to pass through the land in such fury, that none should be able to escape, rendering all a desolate wilderness (chap. vi. 14), destroying also their idols, and scattering around them the dead carcases of the people, so that the things in which they had foolishly trusted, should only in the day of evil prove the witnesses, and companions of their ruin (chap. vi. 3-6). Finally, in respect to those who should escape the more immediate evils, not only should they be scattered far and wide among the nations, but should there also meet with taunting and reproaches; nay, a sword should be drawn out after them, as had already been predicted by Moses (chap. v. 12; Lev. xxvi. 33); they, too, were to be for burning (so also Isa. vi. 13); for the anger of the Lord was still to pursue after them with "furious rebukes," until he had completely broken their rebellious hearts, and wrought in them a spirit of true contrition for sin and perfect reconciliation of heart with God (chap. vi. 9).

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