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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Ezekiel 25:1 - 25:1
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Against the Ammonites
Eze 25:1. And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Eze 25:2. Son of man, direct thy face towards the sons of Ammon, and prophesy against them, Eze 25:3. And say to the sons of Ammon, Hear ye the word of the Lord Jehovah! Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Because thou sayest, Aha! concerning my sanctuary, that it is profaned; and concerning the land of Israel, that it is laid waste; and concerning the house of Judah, that they have gone into captivity; Eze 25:4. Therefore, behold, I will give thee to the sons of the east for a possession, that they may pitch their tent-villages in thee, and erect their dwellings in thee; they shall eat thy fruits, and they shall drink thy milk. Eze 25:5. And Rabbah will I make a camel-ground, and the sons of Ammon a resting-place for flocks; and ye shall know that I am Jehovah. Eze 25:6. For thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Because thou hast clapped thy hand, and stamped with thy foot, and hast rejoiced in soul with all thy contempt concerning the house of Israel, Eze 25:7. Therefore, behold, I will stretch out my hand against thee, and give thee to the nations for booty, and cut thee off from the peoples, and exterminate thee from the lands; I will destroy thee, that thou mayst learn that I am Jehovah. - In Eze 21:28., when predicting the expedition of Nebuchadnezzar against Jerusalem, Ezekiel had already foretold the destruction of the Ammonites, so that these verses are simply a resumption and confirmation of the earlier prophecy. In the passage referred to, Ezekiel, like Zephaniah before him (Zep 2:8, Zep 2:10), mentions their reviling of the people of God as the sin for which they are to be punished with destruction. This reviling, in which their hatred of the divine calling of Israel found vent, was the radical sin of Ammon. On the occasion of Judah's fall, it rose even to contemptuous and malicious joy at the profanation of the sanctuary of Jehovah by the destruction of the temple (a comparison with Eze 24:21 will show that this is the sense in which נִחַל is to be understood), at the devastation of the land of Israel, and at the captivity of Judah, - in other words, at the destruction of the religious and political existence of Israel as the people of God. The profanation of the sanctuary is mentioned first, to intimate that the hostility to Israel, manifested by the Ammonites on every occasion that presented itself (for proofs, see the comm. on Zep 2:8), had its roots not so much in national antipathies, as in antagonism to the sacred calling of Israel. As a punishment for this, they are not only to lose their land (Eze 25:4 and Eze 25:5), but to be cut off from the number of the nations (Eze 25:6 and Eze 25:7). The Lord will give up their land, with its productions, for a possession to the sons of the east, i.e., according to Gen 25:13-18, to the Arabs, the Bedouins (for בְּנֵי קֶדֶם, see the comm. on Jdg 6:3 and Job 1:3). The Piel יִשְּׁבוּ, although only occurring here, is not to be rejected as critically suspicious, and to be changed into Kal, as Hitzig proposes. The Kal would be unsuitable, because the subject of the sentence can only be בְּנֵי קֶדֶם, and not טִירֹותֵיהֶם; and יָשַׁב in the Kal has an intransitive sense. For טִירֹות, tent-villages of nomads, see the comm. on Gen 25:16. מִשְׁכָּנִים, dwellings, are the separate tents of the shepherds. In the last clauses of Eze 25:4, הֵמָּה is repeated for the sake of emphasis; and Hitzig's opinion, that the first הֵמָּה corresponds to the subject in the clause 'וְיִשְּׁבוּ וגו, the second to that in וְנָתְנוּ, is to be rejected as a marvellous flight of imagination, which approaches absurdity in the assertion that פְּרִי הָאָרֶץ signifies the folds, i.e., the animals, of the land. Along with the fruit of the land, i.e., the produce of the soil, milk is also mentioned as a production of pastoral life, and the principal food of nomads. On the wealth of the Ammonites in flocks and herds, see Jdg 6:5. The words are addressed to Ammon, as a land or kingdom, and hence the feminine suffix. The capital will also share the fate of the land. Rabbah (see the comm. on Deu 3:11) will become a camel-ground, a waste spot where camels lie down and feed. This has been almost literally fulfilled. The ruins of Ammân are deserted by men, and Seetzen found Arabs with their camels not far off (vid., von Raumer, Palestine, p. 268). In the parallel clause, the sons of Ammon, i.e., the Ammonites, are mentioned instead of their land.
In Eze 25:6 and Eze 25:7, the Lord announces to the nation of the Ammonites the destruction that awaits them, and reiterates with still stronger emphasis the sin which occasioned it, namely, the malicious delight they had manifested at Israel's fall. בְּכָל־שָׁאטְךָ is strengthened by בְּנֶפֶשׁ: with all thy contempt in the soul, i.e., with all the contempt which thy soul could cherish. In Eze 25:7 the ἁπ λεγ.. לְבַג occasions some difficulty. The Keri has substituted לְבַז, for booty for the nations (cf. Eze 26:5); and all the ancient versions have adopted this. Consequently בַּג might be a copyist's error for בַּז; and in support of this the circumstance might be adduced, that in Eze 47:13, where גֵּה stands for זֶה, we have unquestionably a substitution of ג for ז. But if the Chetib בז be correct, the word is to be explained - as it has been by Benfey (Die Montasnamen, p. 194) and Gildemeister (in Lassen's Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, iv. 1, p. 213ff.) - from the Sanscrit bha=ga, pars, portio, and has passed into the Semitic languages from the Aryan, like the Syriac bagaa', esca, which P. Boetticher (Horae aram. p. 21) has correctly traced to the Sanscrit bhaj, conquere. - The executors of the judgment are not named; for the threat that God will give up the land of the Ammonites to the Bedouins for their possession, does not imply that they are to exterminate the Ammonites. On the contrary, a comparison of this passage with Amo 1:13-15 and Jer 49:1-5, where the Ammonites are threatened not only with the devastation of their land, but also with transportation into exile, will show that the Chaldeans are to be thought of as executing the judgment. (See the comm. on Eze 25:11.)