Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Ezekiel 16:15 - 16:15

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Ezekiel 16:15 - 16:15


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The apostasy of Israel. Its origin and nature, Eze 16:15-22; its magnitude and extent, Eze 16:23-34. In close connection with what precedes, this apostasy is described as whoredom and adultery. - Eze 16:15. But thou didst trust in thy beauty, and didst commit fornication upon thy name, and didst pour out thy fornication over every one who passed by: his it became. Eze 16:16. Thou didst take off thy clothes, and didst make to thyself spotted heights, and didst commit fornication upon them: things which should not come, and that which should not take place. Eze 16:17. And thou didst take jewellery of thine ornament of my gold and of my silver, which I had given thee, and didst make thyself male images, and didst commit fornication with them; Eze 16:18. And thou didst take thy embroidered clothes, and didst cover them therewith: and my oil and my incense thou didst set before them. Eze 16:19. And my bread, which I gave to thee, fine flour, and oil, and honey, wherewith I fed thee, thou didst set before them for a pleasant odour: this came to pass, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. Eze 16:20. And thou didst take thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou barest to me, and didst sacrifice them to them to devour. Was thy fornication too little? Eze 16:21. Thou didst slay my sons, and didst give them up, devoting them to them. Eze 16:22. And in all thine abominations and thy fornication thou didst not remember the days of thy youth, when thou wast naked and bare, and layest stamping in thy blood. - The beauty, i.e., the glory, of Israel led to its fall, because it made it the ground of its confidence; that is to say, it looked upon the gifts and possessions conferred upon it as its desert; and forgetting the giver, began to traffic with the heathen nations, and allowed itself to be seduced to heathen ways. For the fact, compare Deu 32:15 and Hos 13:6. “We are inflamed with pride and arrogance, and consequently profane the gifts of God, in which His glory ought to be resplendent” (Calvin). תַּזְנִי עַל שְׁמֵךְ does not mean either “thou didst commit fornication notwithstanding thy name” (Winer and Ges. Thes. p. 422), or “against thy name” (Hävernick); for עַל connected with זָנָה has neither of these meanings, even in Jdg 19:2. It means, “thou didst commit fornication upon thy name, i.e., in reliance upon thy name” (Hitzig and Maurer); only we must not understand שֵׁם as referring to the name of the city of God, but must explain it, in accordance with Eze 16:14, as denoting the name, i.e., the renown, which Israel had acquired among the heathen on account of its beauty. In the closing words, לֹו יְהִי, לֹו refers to כָּל־עֹובֵר, and יְהִי stands for וַיְהִי, the copula having been dropped from וַיְהִי because לֹו ought to stand first, and only יְהִי remaining (compare יַךְ, Hos 6:1). The subject to יְהִי is יֳפִי; the beauty became his (cf. Psa 45:12). This fornication is depicted in concrete terms in Eze 16:16-22; and with the marriage relation described in Eze 16:8-13 still in view, Israel is represented as giving up to idolatry all that it had received from its God. - Eze 16:16. With the clothes it made spotted heights for itself. בָּמֹות stands for בָּתֵּי בָּמֹות, temples of heights, small temples erected upon heights by the side of the altars (1Ki 13:32; 2Ki 17:29; for the fact, see the comm. on 1Ki 3:2), which may probably have consisted simply of tents furnished with carpets. Compare 2Ki 23:7, where the women are described as weaving tents for Astarte, also the tent-like temples of the Slavonian tribes in Germany, which consisted of variegated carpets and curtains (see Mohne on Creuzer's Symbolik, V. p. 176). These bamoth Ezekiel calls טְלֻאֹות, not variegated, but spotted or speckled (cf. Gen 30:32), possibly with the subordinate idea of patched (מְטֻלָּא, Jos 9:5), because they used for the carpets not merely whole garments, but pieces of cloth as well; the word being introduced here for the purpose of indicating contemptuously the worthlessness of such conduct. “Thou didst commit whoredom upon them,” i.e., upon the carpets in the tent-temples. The words 'לֹא בָאֹות וגו are no doubt relative clauses; but the usual explanation, “which has not occurred, and will not be,” after Exo 10:14, cannot be vindicated, as it is impossible to prove either the use of בֹּוא in the sense of occurring or happening (= הָיָה), or the use of the participle instead of the preterite in connection with the future. The participle בָאֹות in this connection can only supply one of the many senses of the imperfect (Ewald, §168c), and, like יִהְיֶה, express that which ought to be. The participial form בָאֹות is evidently chosen for the sake of obtaining a paronomasia with בָּמֹות: the heights which should not come (i.e., should not be erected); while לֹא יִהְיֶה points back to וַתִּזְנִי עֲלֵיהֶם: “what should not happen.”

Eze 16:17-22

The jewellery of gold and silver was used by Israel for צַלְמֵי זָכָר, idols of the male sex, to commit fornication with them. Ewald thinks that the allusion is to Penates (teraphim), which were set up in the house, with ornaments suspended upon them, and worshipped with lectisternia. But there is no more allusion to lectisternia here than in Eze 23:41. And there is still less ground for thinking, as Vatke, Movers, and Hävernick do, of Lingam-or Phallus-worship, of which it is impossible to find the slightest trace among the Israelites. The arguments used by Hävernick have been already proved by Hitzig to have no force whatever. The context does not point to idols of any particular kind, but to the many varieties of Baal-worship; whilst the worship of Moloch is specially mentioned in Eze 16:20. as being the greatest abomination of the whole. The fact that נָתַן לִפְּנֵיהֶם, to set before them (the idols), does not refer to lectisternia, but to sacrifices offered as food for the gods, is indisputably evident from the words לְרֵיחַ נִיחֹחַ, the technical expression for the sacrificial odour ascending to God (cf. Lev 1:9, Lev 1:13, etc.). וַיֶּהִי (Eze 16:19), and it came to pass (sc., this abomination), merely serves to give emphatic expression to the disgust which it occasioned (Hitzig). - Eze 16:20, Eze 16:21. And not even content with this, the adulteress sacrificed the children which God had given her to idols. The revulsion of feeling produced by the abominations of the Moloch-worship is shown in the expression לֶאֱכֹול, thou didst sacrifice thy children to idols, that they might devour them; and still more in the reproachful question 'הַמְעַט, “was there too little in thy whoredom?” מִן before תַּזְנוּתַיִךְ is used in a comparative sense, though not to signify “was this a smaller thing than thy whoredom?” which would mean far too little in this connection. The מִן is rather used, as in Eze 8:17 and Isa 49:6, in the sense of too: was thy whoredom, already described in Eze 16:16-19, too little, that thou didst also slaughter thy children to idols? The Chetib תזנותךְ (Eze 16:20 and Eze 16:25) is a singular, as in Eze 16:25 and Eze 16:29; whereas the Keri has treated it as a plural, as in Eze 16:15, Eze 16:22, and Eze 16:33, but without any satisfactory ground. The indignation comes out still more strongly in the description given of these abominations in Eze 16:21 : “thou didst slay my sons” (whereas in Eze 16:20 we have simply “thy sons, whom thou hast born to me”), “and didst give them up to them, בְּהַעֲבִיר, by making them pass through,” sc. the fire. הַעֲבִיר is used here not merely or lustration or februation by fire, but for the actual burning of the children slain as sacrifices, so that it is equivalent to הַעֲבִיר בָּאֵשׁ לַמֹּלֶךְ (2Ki 23:10). By the process of burning, the sacrifices were given to Moloch to devour. Ezekiel has the Moloch-worship in his eye in the form which it had assumed from the times of Ahaz downwards, when the people began to burn their children to Moloch (cf. 2Ki 16:3; 2Ki 21:6; 2Ki 23:10), whereas all that can be proved to have been practised in earlier times by the Israelites was the passing of children through fire without either slaying or burning; a februation by fire (compare the remarks on this subject in the comm. on Lev 18:21). - Amidst all these abominations Israel did not remember its youth, or how the Lord had adopted it out of the deepest wretchedness to be His people, and had made it glorious through the abundance of His gifts. This base ingratitude shows the depth of its fall, and magnifies its guilt. For Eze 16:22 compare Eze 16:7 and Eze 16:6.