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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Ezekiel 5:1 - 5:1
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The Sign which is to Portray Israel's Impending Destiny. - Eze 5:1. And thou, son of man, take to thyself a sharp sword, as a razor shalt thou take it to thyself, and go with it over thy head, and over thy chin, and take to thee scales, and divide it (the hair). Eze 5:2. A third part burn with fire in the midst of the city, when the days of the siege are accomplished: and take the (other) third, smite with the sword round about it: and the (remaining) third scatter to the winds; and the sword will I draw out after them. Eze 5:3. Yet take a few of them by number, and bind them in the skirt of thy garment. Eze 5:4. And of these again take a few, and cast them into the fire, and burn them with fire; from thence a fire shall go forth over the whole house of Israel. - The description of this sign is easily understood. תַּעַר הַגַּלָּבִים, “razor of the barbers,” is the predicate, which is to be understood to the suffix in תִּקָּחֶנָּה; and the clause states the purpose for which Ezekiel is to use the sharp sword - viz. as a razor, in order to cut off therewith the hair of his head and beard. The hair, when cut off, he is to divide into three parts with a pair of scales (the suffix in חִלַּקְתָּם refers ad sensum to the hair). The one third he is to burn in the city, i.e., not in the actual Jerusalem, but in the city, sketched on the brick, which he is symbolically besieging (Eze 4:3). To the city also is to be referred the suffix in סְבִיבֹותֶיהָ, Eze 5:2, as is placed beyond doubt by Eze 5:12. In the last clause of Eze 5:2, which is taken from Lev 26:33, the description of the sign passes over into its exposition, for אַחֲרֵיהֶם does not refer to the hair, but to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. The significance also of this symbolical act is easily recognised, and is, moreover, stated in Eze 5:12. Ezekiel, in this act, represents the besieged Jerusalem. What he does to his hair, that will God do to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. As the hair of the prophet falls under the sword, used as a razor, so will the inhabitants of Jerusalem fall, when the city is captured, into destruction, and that verily an ignominious destruction. This idea is contained in the picture of the hair-cutting, which was a dishonour done to what forms the ornament of a man. See on 2Sa 10:4. A third of the same is to perish in the city. As the fire destroys the hair, so will pestilence and hunger consume the inhabitants of the beleaguered city (Eze 5:12). The second third will, on the capture of the city, fall by the sword in the environs (Eze 5:12); the last third will God scatter to the winds, and-as Moses has already threatened the people will draw forth the sword after them, still to persecute and smite them (Eze 5:12). This sign is continued (Eze 5:3 and Eze 5:4) in a second symbolical act, which shadows forth what is further to happen to the people when dispersed among the heathen. Of the third scattered to the winds, Ezekiel is to bind a small portion in the skirt of his garment.
מִשָּׁם, “from thence,” refers not to הַשְּׁלִישִׁית, but, ad sensum, to תִּזְרֶה לָרוּחַ: “from the place where the third that is scattered to the winds is found” - i.e., as regards the subject-matter, of those who are to be found among the dispersion. The binding up into the כְּנָפַיִם, “the corners or ends of the garment” (cf. Jer 2:34), denotes the preservation of the few, who are gathered together out of the whole of those who are dispersed among the heathen; cf. 1Sa 25:29; Eze 16:8. But even of these few He shall still cast some into the fire, and consume them. Consequently those who are gathered together out of exile are not all to be preserved, but are still to be sifted by fire, in which process a part is consumed. This image does not refer to those who remain behind in the land, when the nation is led away captive to Babylon (Theodoret, Grotius, and others), but, as Ephrem the Syrian and Jerome saw, to those who were saved from Babylon, and to their further destiny, as is already clear from the מִשָּׁם, rightly understood. The meaning of the last clause of Eze 5:4 is disputed; in it, as in the final clause of Eze 5:2, the symbolical representation passes over into the announcement of the thing itself. מִמֶּנּוּ, which Ewald would arbitrarily alter into מִמֶּנִּי, cannot, with Hävernick, be referred to אֶל־תֹּוךְ, because this yields a very forced sense, but relates to the whole act described in Eze 5:3 and Eze 5:4 : that a portion thereof is rescued and preserved, and yet of this portion many are consumed by fire - from that a fire shall go forth over the whole house of Israel. This fire is explained by almost all expositors, from Theodoret and Jerome onwards, of the penal judgment which were inflicted after the exile upon the Jews, which reached their culminating point in the siege and destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, and which still continue in their dispersion throughout the whole world. But this view, as Kliefoth has already remarked, is not only in decided antagonism to the intention of the text, but it is, moreover, altogether impossible to see how a judgment of extermination for all Israel can be deduced from the fact that a small number of the Israelites, who are scattered to the winds, is saved, and that of those who are saved a part is still consumed with fire. From thence there can only come forth a fire of purification for the whole of Israel, through which the remnant, as Isaiah had already predicted (Isa 6:12.), is converted into a holy seed. In the last clause, consuming by fire is not referred to. The fire, however, has not merely a destructive, but also a cleansing, purifying, and quickening power. To kindle such a fire on earth did Christ come (Luk 12:40), and from Him the same goes out over the whole house of Israel. This view, for which Kliefoth has already rightly decided, receives a confirmation through Eze 6:8-10, where is announced the conversion of the remnant of those Israelites who had been dispersed among the nations.
So far the symbolical acts. Before, however, we pass on to the explanation of the following oracle, we must still briefly touch the question, whether these acts were undertaken and performed by the prophet in the world of external reality, or whether they were occurrences only internally real, which Ezekiel experienced in spirit - i.e., in an ecstatic condition - and afterwards communicated to the people. Amongst modern expositors, Kliefoth has defended the former view, and has adduced the following considerations in support: A significant act, and yet also a silent, leisurely one, must be performed, that it may show something to those who behold it. Nor is the case such, as Hitzig supposes, that it would have been impossible to carry out what had been required of the prophet in Ezekiel 4. It had, indeed, its difficulty; but God sometimes requires from His servants what is difficult, although He also helps them to the performance of it. So here He will make it easy for the prophet to recline, by binding him (Eze 4:8). “In the sign, this certainly was kept in view, that it should be performed; and it, moreover, was performed, although the text, in a manner quite intelligible with reference to an act commanded by God, does not expressly state it.” For these latter assertions, however, there is anything but convincing proof. The matter is not so simple as Kliefoth supposes, although we are at one with him in this, that neither the difficulty of carrying out what was commanded in the world of external reality, nor the non-mention of the actual performance, furnishes sufficient grounds for the supposition of merely internal, spiritual occurrences. We also are of opinion that very many of the symbolical acts of the prophets were undertaken and performed in the external world, and that this supposition, as that which corresponds most fully with the literal meaning of the words, is on each occasion the most obvious, and is to be firmly adhered to, unless there can be good grounds for the opposite view. In the case now before us, we have first to take into consideration that the oracle which enjoins these symbolical acts on Ezekiel stands in close connection, both as to time and place, with the inauguration of Ezekiel to the prophetic office. The hand of the Lord comes upon him at the same place, where the concluding word at his call was addressed to him (the שָׁם, Eze 3:22, points back to שָׁם in Eze 3:15); and the circumstance that Ezekiel found himself still on the same spot to which he had been transported by the Spirit of God (Eze 3:14), shows that the new revelation, which he here still received, followed very soon, if not immediately, after his consecration to the office of prophet. Then, upon the occasion of this divine revelation, he is again, as at his consecration, transported into an ecstatic condition, as is clear not only from the formula, “the hand of the Lord came upon me,” which in our book always has this signification, but also most undoubtedly from this, that he again sees the glory of Jehovah in the same manner as he had seen it in Ezekiel 1 - viz. when in an ecstatic condition. But if this were an ecstatic vision, it is obvious that the acts also which the divine appearance imposed upon him must be regarded as ecstatic occurrences; since the assertion that every significant act must be performed, in order that something may be shown to those who witness it, is fundamentally insufficient for the proof that this act must fall within the domain of the earthly world of sense, because the occurrences related in Ezekiel 8-11 are viewed even by Kliefoth himself as purely internal events. As decisive, however, for the purely internal character of the symbolical acts under consideration (Ezekiel 4 and 5), is the circumstance that the supposition of Ezekiel having, in his own house, actually lain 390 days upon his left, and then, again, 40 days upon his right side without turning, stands in irreconcilable contradiction with the fact that he, according to Eze 8:1., was carried away in ecstasy to Jerusalem, there to behold in the temple the monstrosities of Israel's idolatry and the destruction of Jerusalem. For the proof of this, see the introduction to Ezekiel 8.