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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Ezekiel 25:15 - 25:15
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Against the Philistines
Eze 25:15. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Because the Philistines act with revenge, and avenge themselves with contempt in the soul to destroy in everlasting enmity, Eze 25:16. Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I will stretch out my hand over the Philistines, and cut off the Cretans, and destroy the remnant by the seashore. Eze 25:17. And I will execute great vengeance upon them through chastisements of wrath, and they shall know that I am Jehovah, when I bring my vengeance upon them. - The Philistines resembled the Edomites and Ammonites in their disposition towards the covenant nation, the former in their thirst for revenge, the latter in their malicious rejoicing at Israel's fall. For this reason they had already been classed by Isaiah (Isa 11:14) with Edom, Moab, and Ammon as enemies, who would be successfully attacked and overcome by Israel, when the Lord had gathered it again from its dispersion. In the description of its sin towards Israel we have a combination of elements taken from the conduct of Edom and Ammon (vv. 12 and 6). They execute revenge with contempt in the soul (שְׁאָט בְּנֶפֶשׁ, as in v. 6), with the intention to destroy (לְמַשְׁחִית) Israel; and this revenge springs from eternal, never-ending hostility. The Lord will cut off the whole of the people of the Philistines for this. כְּרֵתִים, Cretans, originally a branch of the Philistian people, settled in the south-west of Canaan. The name is used by Ezekiel for the people, as it had already been by Zephaniah (Zep 2:5), for the sake of the paronomasia with הִכְרַתִּי. The origin of the name is involved in obscurity, as the current derivation from Creta rests upon a very doubtful combination (cf. Stark, Gaza, pp. 66 and 99ff.). By the “remnant of the sea-coast,” i.e., the remnant of the inhabitants of the coast of the Mediterranean, in other words, of the Philistines, the destruction of which had already been predicted by Amos (Amo 1:8), Isaiah (Isa 14:30), and Jeremiah (Jer 42:4), we are to understand the whole nation to the very last man, all that was still left of the Philistines (see the comm. on Amo 1:8). - The execution of the vengeance threatened by God began in the Chaldean period, in which Gaza was attacked by Pharaoh, and, judging from Jer 47:1-7, the whole of Philistia was laid waste by the Chaldeans (see the fuller comments on this in the exposition of Jer 47:1-7). But the ultimate fulfilment will take place in the case of Philistia also, through the Messianic judgment, in the manner described in the commentary on Zep 2:10.