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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadMatthew Poole Commentary - Ezekiel 44:10 - 44:10
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The Levites; priests intended here, and indeed the sons or posterity of them are here intended; for this apostacy among them was elder than the eldest of them all.
Far from me: idolaters go far from God, for they depart as an adulterous wife from her husband; their hearts and affections are far from God, they fall to heathenish idolatry.
When Israel went astray: it may be worth our while to inquire what time, or near what time, this was. I doubt Baal-peor, Num 25, or from Solomon’s time, when there was somewhat of this sin among the priests. But of Rehoboam’s time it is said, 2Ch_12:1, all Israel forsook the law of the Lord. And in Ahaz’s time, when the altar at Damascus so pleased him and the high priest Uriah, that presently an altar like that is made and set up between God’s house and altar; and orders, or, in our language, injunctions, from the king to the high priest, and from him to the inferior priests and Levites, who obey, 2Ki_16:16: and Manasseh carried the apostacy higher. Now account from any of these; from the last of them to the first return out of captivity is one hundred and fourteen years, to which we must add the twenty-five years which each priest must be ere they enter the priest’s office, it will amount to one hundred and thirty-nine years, and to these add forty-four ere this temple was repaired, it will be one hundred and eighty-three years too great an age for any of the priests to be of; therefore, as I said, the priests that are now degraded are the children of those apostate priests who were {as Zec_1:5,6, said of the fathers} dead.
They shall bear their iniquity; shall bear the punishment of this their apostacy, be debased to meanest services, subjected to others, and be deprived for ever ministering at the altar. So 2Ki_23:8,9; and so God executed his threat against Eli’s house, 1Sa_2:13.