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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadEzekiel, Jonah, and Pastoral Epistles by Patrick Fairbairn - Ezekiel 21:18 - 21:27
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Eze_21:18. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying,
Eze_21:19. And thou, son of man, set thee two ways, by which the sword of the king of Babylon may come; from one land they shall both proceed; and make a finger-post, (Literally, make or engrave a hand, åְéָã áָּøֵà . The old rendering of “appoint a place,” is now justly exploded; for neither does éָã ever signify exactly a place, or áּøָà to appoint. That the word éָã was sometimes used in much the same sense that our word hand is, as something to indicate or point out what was to be observed or known, is evident from 1Sa_15:12, 2Sa_18:18, where hand-post or index-pillar must be meant. See also Deu_23:12 : “And a hand (or sign-post) shall be to thee without the camp;” and Isa_56:5. That áָּøָà is used in the sense of forming or engraving, needs no proof.) at the head of the way to the city make it.
Eze_21:20. Set a way for the sword to come to Rabbath of the children of Ammon, and to Judah, into Jerusalem the fortified. (The expressions here are chosen with great care to bring out an impressive sense: This way for the sword of the king of Babylon was not only to lead to Judah, but into Jerusalem, to settle and rest there, in the fortified—what then will its fortifications avail? In such a connection, the fortified has a strongly ironical meaning.)
Eze_21:21. For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way (the cross- way, the point where the way to those two cities diverged), (The phrase àֵí äָãֶּøֶê , mother of the way, is peculiar, but there is no reason to think with Häv. that the Arabic sense of highway should be given to it. The point where the king stood was, as it were, the parent of ways. Two directions issued from it; the king hesitated which to take, and the prophet was, as by a finger-post, to indicate his course.) at the head of the two ways, to use divination; he shakes the arrows; he in quires at the teraphim; he inspects the liver. (These things are plainly mentioned as the practices that would naturally be followed by an idolater, such as the king of Babylon, in seeking direction regarding the course it was advisable for him to pursue. The inspection of the liver is known to have been particularly resorted to in such cases, even in the later periods of Greek and Roman History. The shaking of the arrows is not mentioned as a practice in divination among ancient European nations, although some earlier commentators, and s till also Hitzig, held it to be much the same as the âåëïìáíôé ́ á among the Greeks; but it is referred to in some old Arabic writings as formerly in use, Pockocke Specil. Hist. Arab. p. 329, etc.; also Sale’s Koran, Prelim. Disc. sec. 5, makes mention of se ven arrows kept in the temple at Mecca, for the purpose of divining, though only three were customarily used. The practice is condemned in the Koran among other superstitions (c. 5). In one of the sculptures brought from Nineveh, a representation is given of the king with a cup in his right hand, his left resting upon his bow, and then again with two arrows in his right hand and his bow in the left; and there is reason for supposing that he there appears practising the arts of divination, both by cup and arrows (Bonomi’s Nineveh, pp. 263-5). The other action mentioned, inquiring at the teraphim, was an idolatrous practice too frequently resorted to by the covenant-people themselves. Indeed, this is the only passage where the use of teraphim is expressly ascribed to a heathen, although in 1Sa_15:23, it is stigmatized as of an essentially heathen, and consequently obnoxious character,” Stubbornness is as iniquity and teraphirn.” They first appear as idol-gods of Mesopotamia, whence Rachel brought them by stealth out of her father’s house, who expressly styles them “his gods.” From the connection in which they are afterwards found, there can be little doubt that they were a sort of household gods, a kind of family talisman, worshipped with the general design of obtaining a blessing on the family, and at times also for the more special purpose of getting direction respecting the future. There was consequently always a degree of superstition and idolatry connected with their use, and the idea of Horsley (on Hos_3:4), that they were probably at first symbolical figures, somewhat like the cherubim, and not improperly used in the worship of Jehovah, is entirely without foundation. The very first mention of them is in the way of disapprobation, as not only did Jacob disown having anything to do with them, but afterwards caused them to be buried under the oak at Shechem (Gen_35:4). The setting up of teraphim by Micah, as recorded in Judges 17 etc., and coupling them with the ephod (made after that of the high priest, by which he inquired of God), is in perfect accordance with what has been said: it indicated a family-worship, considerably corrupt, and closely connected with divination. And so must we regard the use of them here by the king of Babylon, for the purpose of getting direction in his course; the more so as he came from Mesopotamia, the original country of the teraphim. In Zec_10:2 the false prophets are said to get their lying answers from teraphim.)
Eze_21:22. In his right hand is the divination of Jerusalem (i.e. the lot determining that he should first direct his course to Jerusalem), to place battering-rains, to open the mouth in slaughter (i.e. to raise the war-cry of death), to lift the voice with shouting, to place battering-rams against the gates, to cast a mount, to erect a watch-tower.
Eze_21:23. And it is to them as a divination of nothingness in their eyes (the eyes of those) that have sworn oaths to them; (Here, again, there is room for considerable diversity of opinion. We have adopted the most natural rendering, and understand by the persons who had sworn oaths, the Jews, and by the Babylonians, the them to whom they had sworn. It certainly is rather strange that these Babylonians, to whom the them in this case refers, had not been previously mentioned, at least no further than as they were represented by the king of Babylon. To avoid this harshness, various other interpretations have been adopted. Häv.: “Oaths of oaths are to them;” meaning, they had very solemn oaths from the Lord, or pledges of his protection and support, on which they falsely relied—a very far-fetched interpretation. Ewald: “They thought they were to have weeks upon weeks”—changing the punctuation. But what even if they thought that? It still would not have evinced the divination to be false in their account. There is more of apparent reason in the interpretation of Jerome and some of the ancients, who take the words in substantially the same sense, but understood them as referring especially to the seventh day: keeping Sabbaths as if they were perfectly secure. But this also is strained and untenable. There can be little doubt, I think, that the words refer to the Jews; the divination which directed the course of Nebuchadnezzar to them, and promised him a successful siege, appear unworthy of credit to them, even as nothingness in their view—though they were in closest compact with the invaders (so I would be inclined to take the allusion, somewhat ironically), had sworn oaths of allegiance to them; these no longer secure unanimity of mind, or suffice to avert the brooding evil, because the iniquity of those who had sworn comes into remembrance for chastisement.) but he remembers the iniquity, that they may be taken.
Eze_21:24. Therefore, thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Because your iniquities are remembered for you, by reason of the discovering of your transgressions, to make your sins appear in all your doings, because of your being remembered, ye shall be taken with the hand.
Eze_21:25. And thou, pierced through, (That çָìָì here should be taken in the same sense in which it occurs at Eze_21:14, seems quite manifest; for it was evidently used there in the singular, and with the additional epithet äַâָּãåֹì , the mighty one, with express allusion to the king. The apparent contrariety between this sense and the actual result in history has led very generally to the adoption of the meaning of profane. But the word never properly signifies profane, and the grammatical sense must be retained, whatever consequences follow. The contrariety, however, is only apparent, as we shall show.) wicked prince of Israel, whose day comes at the time of the sin of the end (i.e. the last stage of guilt, when the iniquity being full, the final arrest must be laid on it, Eze_35:5).
Eze_21:26. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, the mitre is removed, ( îִöְðֶôֶú is never used for the crown of a king, but, as is now on all hands admitted, denotes the mitre or head ornament of the high priest (Exo_28:4, etc.). See Ges. Lex., and Hengstenberg’s Christol. on this passage.) and the crown is taken off; this is not this; the low is exalted and the high is brought down.
Eze_21:27. An overturning, overturning, overturning will I render it; also this shall not be until he comes, to whom belongs righteousness, and I will give it to him.
This remarkable passage, in its earlier part representing Nebuchadnezzar as hesitating whether he was to take the road that led to Rabbath or that to Jerusalem, and brought ultimately to decide upon the latter by the usual appliances of divination, contains as to its form a striking specimen of Ezekiel’s manner. He does not simply announce the event that was to happen, as the prophets generally do, but gives it life and motion; exhibits the springs of action as actually at work before our eyes. It were entirely to mistake the character of the representation (however commonly it is done), to suppose that the scene here described, as it appeared to the illuminated sense of the prophet, was in real life to take place precisely after this form; not less than it would be to maintain that the two ways toward Jerusalem and Rabbath, with the directing sign at the point of divergence, must have been actually constructed by the prophet’s hand. The whole is a delineation in a vision of what, as to the substance, was to happen in the regular course of things. All would occur precisely as if the lively scene here described were to pass into reality. Nebuchadnezzar would assuredly move toward the south with his hosts and implements of war, and, advancing under the auspices of his religion, would as assuredly direct his march, in the first instance, toward Jerusalem. What a sublime proof of the overruling providence and controlling agency of Jehovah! The mightiest monarch of the world, travelling at the head of almost unnumbered legions, and himself consciously owning no other direction than that furnished by the blind instruments of his own superstition, yet having his path marked out to him beforehand by this servant of the living God! How strikingly did it show that the greatest potentates on earth, and even the spiritual wickednesses in high places, have their bounds appointed to them by the hand of God, and that however magisterially they may seem to conduct themselves, still they cannot overstep the prescribed limits, and must be kept in all their operations subservient to the higher purposes of Heaven!
The chief point, however, in the representation, is the view that is given in the concluding part of the senseless security of the people at Jerusalem while the portentous cloud was gathering in the north, and of the tremendous fury with which it was soon to discharge itself upon their heads. They who were ready to believe every divination among themselves that fell in with their own vain and corrupt imaginations, would pay no regard either to the oracles of superstition, or to the solemn utterances of God’s Spirit, when these told against the infatuated and perilous course they were pursuing. Remaining confident and secure to the last, the evil was destined to come upon them as a resistless whirlwind of destruction. And to show how in this fearful convulsion all was to be really of God, while human instruments alone outwardly appeared—to show that the approaching storm of violence and uproar was to be all directed by the hand of him whom they had so long offended and provoked by their sins—the king of Babylon and his forces are now in a manner lost sight of, and Jehovah alone seems to speak and act. It is he who brings into remembrance the transgressions of the people, and punishes them for their sin; he who utterly subverts the order of things then existing, because of the prevailing and incorrigible wickedness; yet so as, at the same time, not to involve all in complete and final destruction, but only to level with the dust what had become so offensive to the eye of his holiness, and hold the prospect of a new and better destiny in reserve for one who could accomplish it in righteousness.
It is from this change in the mode of representation—from the Lord himself being here again brought directly upon the stage, that we are to account for the peculiar language employed, especially in regard to king Zedekiah. By a lively and energetic turn in the discourse, the prophet passes from the people at large to address himself immediately to Zedekiah, and styles him not only wicked, but also pierced through; although, it is well known, he was not actually slain in the calamities that ensued. But it is not exactly what was to be done by the external sword of the Babylonians that comes here into view; it is the execution of the Lord’s judgment, under the same form and aspect of severity as that which had been presented in the former part of the vision—the terrors of his drawn sword. This sword is but an image of the judgment itself, precisely as the devouring fire had been in the vision immediately preceding; and it is not the less true that Zedekiah fell under its powerful stroke, though he personally survived the catastrophe. Driven ignominiously from his throne, doomed to see his family slain before his eyes, to have these eyes themselves put out, and to be led as a miserable and helpless captive in chains to Babylon, he might with the most perfect propriety be regarded as the grand victim of the Lord’s sword—already, in a manner, pierced through with it; for, to the strongly idealistic spirit of the prophet, the wickedness and the sword, the sin and its punishment, appear inseparably connected together. The overthrow to which he was destined seemed to the prophet’s eye at once so inevitable and so near, that he could speak of it no otherwise than as a thing already in existence.
But it was to be no merely personal loss and degradation; the overthrow to be accomplished on Zedekiah was to draw along with it the complete subversion of the present state of things. Therefore, while the prophet represents the day of visitation as coming upon him, he also speaks of it as being at the time when sin generally had reached its consummation, and the completeness of the guilt was to have its parallel in the complete and terminal character of the judgment. All must now be made desolate; the mitre of the high priest (the emblem of his official dignity and honour, as the representative of a consecrated and priestly people), as well as the crown of the king, was to be put away, and everything turned upside down. Such a convulsed and disorganized state of things was approaching, that, as it is said, “this should no longer be this;” in other words, nothing should be allowed to remain what it had been, it should be another thing than formerly; as is presently explained in what follows, “the low is exalted and the high is brought down,”—a general revolution, in which the outward relations of things should be made to change places, in just retaliation upon the people for having so grossly perverted the moral relations of things. (Quite similar descriptions are given of great revolutions and subversions of the established order of things in the other prophets—for example, Isa_24:1; Isa_2:12.) Yet the agents and participators in these revolutions are warned not to expect any settled condition to come out of them; “this also,” it is said, “shall not be,” it shall not attain to permanence and security. And so overthrow is to follow overthrow; “nowhere shall there be rest, nowhere security, all things shall be in a state of fluctuation, until the appearing of the great restorer and prince of peace.” (Hengstenberg on the verse.)
When the passage is viewed thus in its proper connection and comprehensive import, the objections vanish which have been raised (by Pradus and others) against the mention of the high priest’s insignia, and in justification of their understanding all of the king—such as, that it is the king alone who is personally addressed in the preceding context, and the priesthood is not immediately contemplated in any other part of the discourse. But the king himself, who is expressly named, is not introduced as if he alone were concerned in what is said; he comes thus prominently into notice only as the political head and representative of the covenant-people; and the day of his calamity was to be for them also the time of the end, as regarded their existing privileges and comforts. The loss of these could not be more strikingly represented than by the removal, at one blow, of the distinctions of the high priest and the king; for what should become of all that peculiarly belonged to them as a people, if there was no one either to hold the reins of government, or to make intercession with Heaven! Everything, in such a case, must be in a state of prostration and ruin.
Yet only for a time, and as regarded the existing order of things; the period of trouble and desolation was to have a limit; it was only to last till one should come, who would prevail to rectify the disorder and retrieve the ruin. We can have no hesitation in understanding by this person the Messiah, whether we translate, u till he comes to whom the right is,” or, “till he comes to whom the judgment belongs;” (I am inclined to adopt the latter view; authorities are very nearly equally divided on the matter. But I scarcely think the passages referred to for ascribing to îִùְּׁôָè the sense of right or prerogative, bear out that meaning, especially when used absolutely, as here. The common and usual meaning of the word undoubtedly is judgment, or right objectively, right as administered and done, the execution of righteousness. Now, while this in the full and primary sense is ascribed to God (Deu_1:17), it is also ascribed, subordinately, to rulers, but especially to Messiah, as the grand representative and revealer of Godhead in the affairs of men (Psalms 72; Isa_9:7, etc.). He is held out to men’s hopes, in these and many similar passages, as the great avenger of evil, and the administrator of righteousness. Finally, this view appears to suit the connection much better. The contrast between those who then were in office and him that was to come was not as to the right to rule, but to the fitness and power for exercising the right. They had the right, but abused it; he was to exercise it with perfect rectitude; they had put all wrong, he was to put all right. I therefore hold with Hävernick here, in opposition to Hengstenberg, Hitzig, and many others, and believe with him that the promise has some reference to the word in Gen_49:10. The sceptre was not to depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, till Shiloh come; but now, says Ezekiel, there shall be no crown till the Just One comes—a certain withdrawal meanwhile takes place—a mere fragment remains till then.) “and I give it to him.” It is not expressly said what was to be given him, and should stand waiting for its proper possessor till he should come; but the context plainly forbids us to understand anything less than what was taken away—the things represented by the priestly mitre and the royal crown. The true priestly dignity and the proper regal glory were to be gone for a time into abeyance; some partial, temporary, and fluctuating possession of them might be regained, but nothing more; the adequate and permanent realization was only to be found in the person of Messiah, because in him alone was there to be a fitting representation of the Divine righteousness. It is true there was something like a restoration of the standing and honour of the priesthood after the return from the Babylonish exile; and if the ideas currently entertained upon the subject were correct, there might appear in that a failure of the prophecy. But there was no right restoration of the priestly, any more than of the regal dignity at the time specified; it was but a shadow of the original glory. For there was no longer the distinctive prerogative of the Urim and Thummim, nor the ark of the covenant, nor the glory overshadowing the mercy-seat; all was in a depressed and mutilated condition, and even that subject to many interferences from the encroachments of foreign powers. So much only was given, both in respect to the priesthood and the kingdom, as to show that the Lord had not forsaken his people, and to serve as pledge of the coming glory. But it was to the still prospective, rather than the present state of things, that the eye of faith was directed to look for the proper restoration. And lest any should expect otherwise, the prophet Zechariah, after the return from Babylon, took up the matter, as it were, where Ezekiel had left it, and intimated in the plainest manner that what was then accomplished was scarcely worth taking into account; it was, at the most, but doing in a figure what could only find its real accomplishment in the person and work of Messiah. Especially at Eze_6:14 : “And he (the branch) shall build the temple of the Lord, and he shall bear the glory; and shall sit and rule upon his throne, and he shall be a priest upon his throne.” Thus the mitre and the crown were both to meet in him, and the temple in its noblest sense be built, and the glory be obtained, such as it became the Lord’s anointed to possess. Meanwhile, all was but preparatory and imperfect.
But now, with this glimpse of coming revival and future glory peering through the dark cloud of judgment and tribulation, which for the present hung around the covenant-people, let us listen to the prophet’s announcement of the doom of Ammon, in which there is no such perspective of future recovery.