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Israel's Behavior In Canaan And The Lord's Sentence
v. 27. Therefore, son of man, speak unto the house of Israel, represented by the elders who had come to inquire of the Lord, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God, Yet in this, or, "In this again," your fathers have blasphemed Me, holding Him up to mockery and derision, in that they have committed a trespass against Me, becoming guilty of faithlessness and treachery.
v. 28. For when I had brought them into the land, for the which I lifted up Mine hand to give it to them, promising it to them by a solemn oath, then they saw every high hill and all the thick trees, places which were commonly devoted to idolatrous worship by the heathen, and they offered there their sacrifices, and there they presented the provocation of their offering, for their sacrifices continually provoked the Lord to anger, since they were made contrary to His command and will; there also they made their sweet savor, said here of all burnt offerings, and poured out there their drink-offerings, thus including all bloody and unbloody sacrifices in their heathenish worship. This was the principal transgression of the entire people of Israel after they had reached the Land of Promise.
v. 29. Then I said unto them, What is the high place whereunto ye go? And the name thereof is called Bamah, that is, height, unto this day. In spite of the Lord's remonstrance, Israel and Judah continued to regard the high places as places of worship, persisting in their idolatrous treachery to the very last.
v. 30. Wherefore say unto the house of Israel, namely, the generation then living, Thus saith the Lord God, Are ye polluted after the manner of your fathers? in being guilty of the same idolatry as that which brought God's wrath upon Israel in the first centuries of its national existence. And commit ye whoredom, spiritual adultery, after their abominations?
v. 31. For when ye offer your gifts, as described above, when ye make your sons to pass through the fire, ye pollute yourselves with all your idols, even unto this day; and shall I be enquired of by you, O house of Israel? whose representatives were even then sitting before the prophet. As I live, saith the Lord God, I will not be enquired of by you, he would give them no hearing until they had done away with the wickedness which was now charged against them.
v. 32. And that which cometh into your mind, what they were now deliberately planning to do, shall not be at all, shall not come to pass, that ye say, We will be as the heathen, as the families of the countries, amalgamating with them in every respect, losing their identity as a separate people altogether, to serve wood and stone, and thus become the equal of the heathen also in this respect. It was an exclamation, partly of stubbornness, partly of despair, which they here uttered. Therefore the Lord gives them a fitting answer.
v. 33. As I live, saith the Lord God, surely with a mighty hand and with a stretched-out arm, by applying His almighty power, and with fury poured out will I rule over you, asserting His sovereign right over them in spite of their resistance;
v. 34. and I will bring you out from the people and will gather you out of the countries wherein ye are scattered, with a mighty hand and with a stretched-out arm and with fury poured out, so that they would have to acknowledge the rule of God, unwilling though they were.
v. 35. And I will bring you into the wilderness of the people, the spiritual wilderness which characterizes the great mass of the world, with its heathenism and wickedness, and there will I plead with you face to face, bringing the matter to an issue as in a court of law.
v. 36. Like as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, upon the occasion of the giving of the Law, Deu_5:4, so will I plead with you, saith the Lord God. Cf Num_17:5-6.
v. 37. And I will cause you to pass under the rod, as a shepherd does with his sheep, in order to determine their number and thus to prepare their benefits, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant, His chastising having prepared the way to a true sorrow;
v. 38. and I will purge out from among you the rebels, those who persisted in their opposition to His guidance and rule, and them that transgress against Me, those who were guilty of apostasy and treachery; I will bring them forth out of the country where they sojourn, the land of their exile, and they shall not enter into the land of Israel, not partake of the blessings of the Lord's covenant; and ye shall know that I am the Lord, in His summary judgment upon the apostates. But now comes the Messianic promise to shed light into the intense darkness of faithlessness, rebellion, and idolatry.
v. 39. As for you, O house of Israel, those whom the Lord desires once more to gather as His Church, thus saith the Lord God, in an admonition calling them to repentance, not without a mixture of holy irony, Go ye, serve ye every one his idols, for open idolatry is better than hypocrisy, and hereafter also, if ye will not hearken unto Me, since it is easier to deal with downright opponents of the truth than with such as are enmeshed in dead orthodoxy; but pollute ye My holy name no more with your gifts and with your idols, with hypocritical worship, with abominable sacrifices which they brought under the guise of true worship.
v. 40. For in Mine holy mountain, in the mountain of the height of Israel, saith the Lord God, in the Zion of the New Testament, there shall all the house of Israel, all those who belonged to the true, the spiritual Israel, all of them in the land, serve Me; there will I accept them, as His children by faith, and there will I require your offerings and the first-fruits of your oblations with all your holy things, that is, the worship which is done in spirit and in truth.
v. 41. I will accept you with your sweet savor, the believers themselves being a' sweet odor in the nostrils of Jehovah with the incense of their faith, when I bring you out from the people and gather you out of the countries wherein ye have been scattered, this being used in general for the separation of the believers from the great mass of those who are enemies of God; and I will be sanctified in you before the heathen, for the very existence of the Church of Christ serves to spread the glory of God's holy name.
v. 42. And ye shall know that I am the Lord, Jehovah, the everlasting God of the covenant, when I shall bring you into the land of Israel, into the country for the which I lifted up Mine hand to give it to your fathers. The return of Israel to the Land of Promise after the Babylonian Exile was a guarantee of the greater and more wonderful restoration of God's kingdom through the Messiah.
v. 43. And there shall ye remember your ways and all your doings wherein ye have been defiled, in true sorrow over their past wickedness; and ye shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for all your evils that ye have committed; for such is the nature of true repentance.
v. 44. And ye shall know that I am the Lord, the one and only true God, when I have wrought with you, in effecting their deliverance, for My name's sake, not according to your wicked ways, nor according to your corrupt doings, O ye house of Israel, saith the Lord God. That is the remarkable, the marvelous thing about the dealings of God with men, that He does not deal with us according as we have deserved, but according to his grace and mercy in Jesus Christ.