Bible Commentaries
Ezekiel 15

Verses 1-27

XVI

PROPHECIES ON THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM (CONTINUED)

Ezekiel 15-24

We may ask ourselves at the outset, What purpose did Jeremiah serve in preaching forty years the downfall of the city, warning the people of their sins, though he knew that downfall was absolutely certain, yet all the time seeking to save the city? Why should God require a man to give forty years of his life to guard the people against the inevitable? Why should he require of a man like Ezekiel so many years of preaching to those already in exile concerning the fall of the city of Jerusalem? Why should he exert himself in the manner in which he did, to warn those in Babylon of the fall of Jerusalem?

Jeremiah’s preaching had this effect: It prepared the people in a measure for the downfall of their Temple and their capital and thus helped them to keep faith in God. Whereas, the fall of their capital and city without such a warning would have inevitably shattered their faith in God. Jeremiah’s prophecies of the restoration and the glorious future also helped the earnest heart to prepare for that future and for that restoration. Ezekiel’s preaching to the exiles in Babylon also prepared them for the fall of Jerusalem and also preserved their faith in God. It furnished them with truth to keep alive their faith during the period when their Temple was gone; it also served as a stay during the period of the exile and prepared them for the return. Though it seems that Jeremiah’s and Ezekiel’s long ministries were temporarily fruitless, yet they were the means of preparing the people for a possible future and their work abides.

Why did Ezekiel use all these symbols, figures and metaphors to those people who were already in exile in Babylon? It was to prepare their faith, so that when the shock came they might withstand it and be ready to return when God called them. As a result of Jeremiah’s and Ezekiel’s preaching, nearly 50,000 people were prepared to return as soon as the decree of Cyrus was sent forth. One may see no immediate result of his preaching, yet when he is preaching what God wants him to preach, the fruits may be all the greater because they are delayed.

In Ezekiel 15 we have the parable of the vine tree and its interpretation. This is a parable in which Israel is likened to a vine tree among the trees of the forest. The vine tree is a very lowly tree. It is of comparatively little use. The wood thereof is not taken for fire, nor do people make pins or pegs from it. It is simply cast forth to be burned as rubbish. It is not profitable for anything. Then what does he mean? The Kingdom of Judah was among the great kingdoms of the world as the lowly vine tree was among the trees of the forest. It was of little use; it would not do for wood to burn; it would not do to make furniture or anything useful. It was simply cast off. All this we readily see would have its effect upon the people. It is a blow at their national pride. It goes to show that a mere vine of the forest that is cast away and burned as rubbish may be destroyed, while the lordly trees of the forest are still preserved. Judah is a lowly, contemptible kingdom beside the other kingdoms, and it is no great thing if she does perish. Notice, he makes no mention of the fruit of the vine. There was no fruit to this vine. In the case of the grape the vine is useless when there is no fruit; the vine is utterly valueless and fit only to be cast off. Thus he prophesied that Jerusalem should be burned with fire and its inhabitants destroyed.

In Ezekiel 16 we have an allegory of the foundling child and its interpretation. This whole chapter is an allegory. Judah is described as a wretched outcast infant on the very day of its birth, thrown out into the field, a thing all too frequently done among Semitic and other Oriental peoples. There the infant lay, ready to perish. Jehovah comes along and sees the child thus in its neglected, wretched, forsaken condition; takes pity upon it; cares for it in the best way possible; rears it up until the child, a female child, becomes a young woman. She becomes of marriageable age, and then she is espoused to her husband, Jehovah. He adorns her with all the beauties with which a bride can possibly be adorned, and crowns her with a beautiful crown, and as Ezekiel 16:14 says, "Thy renown went forth among the nations for thy beauty; for it was perfect, through my majesty which I had put upon thee." All went well for a time, but the foundling child which had the disposition of the Amorite and of the Hittite, very soon became the faithless bride and then rapidly degenerated into a shameless and abandoned prostitute. She prostituted herself with Egypt, with Assyria, and with Babylonia and their gods; then went into the very extreme of wickedness and sank to the very lowest depths of shame.

As a result of this absolute abandonment to wickedness, this prostitution of herself to idol worship, the nation is doomed to destruction at the hands of the very people after whom she had gone, and whose gods she had sought and worshiped. They were to gather around her from every side and were to destroy and lay waste the very bride of Jehovah. This passage is doubtless the analogue of that famous passage in Revelation 17, where the apostate church is compared to the harlot sitting upon the beast. He goes on and compares Jerusalem with Samaria and with Sodom. Notice verse Ezekiel 16:46: "Thine elder sister is Samaria, she and her daughters, that dwelleth at thy left hand; and thy younger sister that dwelleth at thy right hand is Sodom and her daughters."

In Ezekiel 16:48 he says that Jerusalem is worse and more shameless than even Sodom: "As I live, saith the Lord God, Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters." In Ezekiel 16:49 he gives the sin of Sodom: "Pride, fulness of bread, and prosperous ease," the besetting sins of the society women of every city of the land. Ezekiel 16:51 says, "Neither hath Samaria committed half of thy sins; but thou hast multiplied thine abominations," and Ezekiel 16:53 says, "I will turn again their captivity, the captivity of Sodom and her daughters, and the captivity of Samaria and her daughters, and the captivity of thy captives in the midst of them."

What does he mean by saying that Sodom shall return from her captivity? No Sodomite was preserved; everyone perished. I think it means that in a future age all the land shall be reclaimed and even the place of Sodom shall be repeopled and, when restored and repeopled, will be like unto the inhabitants of Samaria and Jerusalem; that they will be loyal and true with new hearts and right spirits. It cannot be taken literally, for it is impossible that a Sodomite could return from captivity. It is necessary to read carefully all this allegory at one sitting to get its effect, to see and feel its force. It is powerful. Israel was not the descendant of an Amorite nor a Hittite. She had the blood of Chaldea and of Aram, but what he means is that there was in Israel from the very first the seeds of idolatry that existed in those Amorites among whom she lived. Thus Ezekiel prophesies the return of Samaria, the return and restoration of Jerusalem as well as Sodom, the last no doubt in a figurative sense.

We have had symbols, symbolic actions, and parables; now we have a riddle. The riddle is this, Ezekiel 17:3 f: "A great eagle with great wings and long pinions, full of feathers, which had divers colours, came unto Lebanon, and took the top of the cedar; he cropped off the topmost of the young twigs thereof, and carried it into a land of traffic; he set it in a city of merchants." And in Ezekiel 17:5 it says, "He took also of the seed of the land, and planted it in a fruitful soil; he placed it beside many waters; he set it as a willow tree." Verse Ezekiel 17:6: "And it grew, and became a spreading vine of low stature, whose branches turned toward him, and the roots thereof were under him: so it became a vine, and brought forth branches, and shot forth sprigs." Then it began to send its roots in another direction as we see from verse Ezekiel 17:7: "There was also another great eagle with great wings and many feathers: and, behold, this vine did bend its roots toward him, and shot forth its branches toward him, that he might water it."

What is the meaning of it? The first great eagle was Nebuchadnezzar who came from Babylon and lopped off the top of the cedar, Jehoiachin, the son of Josiah, and carried him away to Babylon with seven thousand of the best people. He then set Zedekiah upon the throne and made him a feeble, weak vassal, with the hope that Zedekiah would depend upon him, pay him tribute, seek strength and power from Babylon, i.e., send out his roots to Babylon. But instead of that, Zedekiah begins to plot with Pharaoh-Necho of Egypt and instead of sending roots toward Babylon, he sent them toward Egypt. This is the riddle and the explanation. The riddle found in Ezekiel 17:1-10 and the explanation in Ezekiel 17:11-21.

In Ezekiel 17:22-23 we have the promise of a universal kingdom. He uses the same figure, that of the lofty top of the cedar, the symbol of the lawful descendant, the legitimate heir to the throne of Israel. After the return, God is going to take the lofty top of the cedar and crop off a twig from the topmost limb and plant it in the top of a high mountain in Israel. The latter part of Ezekiel 17:23 says, "And under it shall dwell all birds of every wing; in the shade of the branches thereof shall they dwell." Here he means that from the royal family of David, a twig, the topmost twig, shall be taken by Almighty God, and shall be set upon a high and lofty throne and his kingdom shall become so large, so wide, so broad, that its dominion will be universal, and all the peoples of the world will come to lodge under its branches and enjoy its protection. This, of course, is the messianic kingdom.

In Ezekiel 18 we have Ezekiel’s discussion on the moral freedom and responsibility of the individual before God. This is the most important theological contribution which Ezekiel made to the thought of his age. In this chapter he meets one of the most perplexing problems that ever troubled men. It was the great religious problem of his age. When Jeremiah prophesied the restoration of the people to their land, he said that the time would come when they would no longer say, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge," but each one should bear and suffer for his own sins and sustain an individual, personal relationship to God. Individualism, liberty in religion, was a messianic principle with Jeremiah, but Ezekiel is already living in the new order of things, and he takes up the problem that confronted Jeremiah: "The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are on edge."

What does he mean? It was a proverbial saying and there is implied in it a reproach against divine providence; a suggestion that God is unjust in his administration of the laws of the world; that the children are suffering wrongfully for sins they never committed, but which their fathers committed. All that is implied in it, but the real significance of the proverb is this: "The sins of which you accuse us were born in us; we can’t help them; we must sin; our fathers sinned and the evil has been transmitted to us; we can’t help ourselves."

The proverb rose out of the fact that God dealt with nations as units, and the individual shared the effects of that dealing. That was the case with Israel all down through the ages until this period. But now when the greatest crisis in the history of the nation had come, the nation destroyed, the city burned, the Temple gone, the ceremonial and ritual at an end, the national religious life collapsed, what would be the effect? The only way in which religion could be preserved was for them to realize that each individual soul had an individual and personal relationship to God. This was something new in the history of religion, this idea of individual responsibility to and relationship with God.

Ezekiel meets this great problem and deals with it fairly and squarely. There are two principles brought out in this chapter, which are these:

1. "All souls [individual personalities] are mine, saith the Lord."

2. "I have no pleasure in the death of any one of these persons. I do not wish any one of them to perish. It grieves me that they do. I have no pleasure in it."

And then, arising from these two principles are two conclusions:

1. Each soul’s destiny depends upon its relation to God.

2. It is their privilege to repent and turn from sin.

The following is an analysis of the chapter:

1. The individual man is not involved in the sins and fate of his people or his forefathers (Ezekiel 18:1-20). He says in Ezekiel 18:5, "If a man be just, and do that which is lawful and right," and the latter part of Ezekiel 18:9, "he is just, he shall surely live." Verse Ezekiel 18:10: "And if he beget a son that is a robber, a shedder of blood he [the robber] shall surely die." Verse Ezekiel 18:13: "But hath given forth upon usury, and hath taken increase shall he then live? He shall not live: he hath done all these abominations; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon him." In the latter part of Ezekiel 18:17, he says, "The righteous man shall not die for the iniquity of his father, he shall surely live." In other words, no man shall die because of his father’s sins, but because of his own, and no man shall be responsible for his son’s sins, but for his own. Each individual shall bear his own personal relationship to God and that alone.

2. The individual soul does not lie under the ban of its own past (Ezekiel 18:21-23). Ezekiel means to say this: “If any man going on in sin, should turn from his sin and should repent and get right with God, he shall live. He is no slave to his moral environment, no victim of the sins of his ancestors, he is not compelled to go on in sin. He means to say also that if a man going on and doing right should fall into sin and do unrighteousness, then he shall die in his iniquity; he shall suffer its consequences; he shall not have attributed to him anything of his past righteousness; that would be completely nullified. He shall not have an average made of his righteousness and wickedness, but according to the condition of his heart at that time he shall either live or die. Now, that does not abrogate the law of heredity; it does not say that we do not inherit evil tendencies; it does not say that the result of our past lives will not continue with us, but it does say that everything depends upon the man’s personal and individual relationship to his sins and to his God; that the trend of his mind, the bent of his character, is that which fixes his destiny.

In other words, it is the doctrine of moral freedom which implies individual responsibility, with a possibility of repentance, a possibility of sin, a possibility of individual relationship to God, a possibility of life or death. This chapter is worthy of long and careful study.

There is a lamentation in Ezekiel 19, set forth in two parables. Here Ezekiel represents Jerusalem as a lioness. She brought up one of her cubs, or whelps, and he became a young lion; the nations came, caught him, bound him, and he was carried away to Egypt. That was Jehoahaz, the son of Josiah. When he was gone, the lioness brought up another one of her whelps and he grew up to be a young lion. The nations came against him and he was caught and carried away to Babylon that his voice should be no more heard on the mountains of Judah. That was Jehoiachin. He makes no mention of Jehoiakim for he was only a vassal set upon the throne by Pharaoh, not the chosen heir to the throne. He makes no mention of Zedekiah for he also was a vassal placed upon the throne by Nebuchadnezzar, not by the choice of the people, and he was not one of the lioness’s whelps.

Then, Ezekiel 19:10-14, he describes the mother as a vine, and shows how the vine is to be plucked up, burned, and destroyed, signifying the end of the reign of Zedekiah with the destruction of his capital.

The prophet reviews the past history of Israel in Ezekiel 20:20 and emphasizes the principle that has saved Israel, viz: Jehovah’s regard for his own name. The elders came to inquire of Ezekiel about the law, or about the fate of the city. Ezekiel said that God would not be inquired of by them. He then goes on to review the history of Israel, and shows them the principle which actuated Jehovah in the saving of that nation. It is this: In Ezekiel 20:9 he says, "I wrought for my name’s sake, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations, among whom they were, in whose sight I made myself known unto them, in bringing them forth out of the land of Egypt." And in Ezekiel 20:14 he refers to their salvation in the wilderness: "I wrought for my name’s sake, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations" and in Ezekiel 20:22, referring to his dealing with them while in the wilderness, he says, "Nevertheless I withdrew my hand, and wrought for my name’s sake, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations." And from Ezekiel 20:30-44 Ezekiel, in prophetic vision, sees that the return from captivity, the restoration from Babylon, the setting up of the glorious messianic kingdom in Jerusalem and Judah, will be done on this very same principle, viz: Jehovah’s regard for his own name.

The following is a summary of the contents of Ezekiel 20:45-21:32:

1. The fire in the forest of the South (Ezekiel 20:35-49). The South refers to Judah and Jerusalem. Ezekiel sees from his situation in Babylon a fire raging in the South and burning the nation. It is a fire that shall not be quenched.

2. The sword of Jehovah shall be on Jerusalem (Ezekiel 21:1-27). In substance, it is this: The sword of Jehovah is the sword of Nebuchadnezzar. It is coming against the city. When it is drawn it shall be sheathed no more. From Ezekiel 21:8-17 we have Ezekiel’s "Song of the Sword," a peculiar dirge picturing the sharpness of the sword and the anguish of the people. From Ezekiel 21:18-27 the prophet represents the king of Babylon as undecided whether he should attack Ammon or Jerusalem first. He stands at the parting of the ways, and uses divination; he shook the arrows to and fro, he consulted the teraphim, he looked in the liver. He drew forth the arrow marked, "Jerusalem." Hence he marches there first.

3. Threatening prophecy against Ammon (Ezekiel 21:28-32). This contains very little that is different from the prophecy against Jerusalem and from what shall follow. The prophet repeats in Ezekiel 21:22, in new form, the same charge he has been making over and over again; the same that Jeremiah had made so repeatedly: the sins of Jerusalem are idolatry, bloodshed, open licentiousness, incest, and almost every other conceivable form of evil. Because of all this her destruction was certain and necessary, and all nations were involved in it.

We have the symbolism of two harlot women in Ezekiel 23. This is a history of two harlot women, Samaria and Jerusalem, under the names of Aholah and Aholibah. This is largely a repetition of Ezekiel 16. The chief thoughts are as follows:

1. The infidelities of Samaria with Assyria and Egypt (Ezekiel 23:1-10).

2. The infidelities of Jerusalem with Assyria, Babylon and Egypt (Ezekiel 23:11-21).

3. Therefore, her fate shall be like that of Samaria (Ezekiel 23:22-35).

4. A new description of their immoralities and another that of punishment (Ezekiel 23:36-49).

The date of the prophecy in Ezekiel 24 is the very day upon which Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem, August 10, 588 B.C. The prophet here performs a symbolic action just as the siege begins. He takes a caldron, a great iron pot. The Lord tells him to pour water into it, to gather pieces of flesh, good pieces, the thigh and shoulder and choice bones; to take from the choicest of the flock, and to pile the wood up under it and to make it boil well. "Let the bones thereof be boiled in the midst of it." Thus the symbolic action is carried on by Ezekiel.

What does it mean? At the moment Nebuchadnezzar began to surround Jerusalem the prophet performs this action. Jerusalem was the caldron; the inhabitants were the flesh therein, Jehovah was kindling the fire; he was piling up the wood and setting it ablaze, so that the unfortunate city would be seething and boiling and roasting as the flesh in a caldron. It was made so hot that the very rust of the iron was purged out and left it clean. In other words, Jerusalem should be so cleansed by the captivity and destruction of its city, that there would be left only the pure and clean (Ezekiel 24:1-14). (See the author’s sermon on this paragraph in The River of Life.)

Another symbolic action occurs on the death of Ezekiel’s wife (Ezekiel 24:15-27). The prophet mourns not. There is a very remarkable statement in the Ezekiel 24:16. God says to Ezekiel, "Son of man, behold, I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke: yet thou shalt neither mourn nor weep, neither shall thy tears run down. Sigh, but not aloud, make no mourning for the dead; bind thy headtire upon thee, and put thy shoes upon thy feet, and cover thy lips, and eat not the bread of men." Then he says, "So I spake unto the people in the morning; at even my wife died; and I did in the morning as I was commanded." This symbolic action actually happened.

He says in Ezekiel 24:18, "I spake unto the people in the morn under the overwhelming grief that had fallen upon him so suddenly, he showed no signs of grief, he shed no tears, and heaved not an audible sigh. The people were unable to understand his actions, verse Ezekiel 24:19: "And the people said unto me, Wilt thou not tell us what these things are to us, that thou doest so?" He tells them: "And ye shall do as I have done: ye shall not cover your lips, nor eat the bread of men." He means that very soon, as by a single stroke, a swift and inevitable stroke of justice, their fair and beloved city, Jerusalem, shall be destroyed, and they will be so stunned, so bewildered, so dumbfounded, so paralyzed that they will be unable to eat bread or even to sigh. In that stunned and dazed condition they shall bear their almost unbearable burden. It was a striking symbol, very touching, and it must have bad great effect.

QUESTIONS

1. To what end were the ministries of Jeremiah and Ezekiel?

2. What the parable of the vine tree and its interpretation? (Ezekiel 15.)

3. Give the allegory of the foundling child and its interpretation (Ezekiel 16).

4. What the riddle of Ezekiel 17, what is its explanation, and what is the great promise in the latter part of this chapter?

5. What is Ezekiel’s discussion on the moral freedom and responsibility of the individual before God? (Ezekiel 18.)

6. What the lamentation in Ezekiel 19, and bow is it act forth in two parables? Give their interpretation.

7. What the principle upon which Jehovah acted toward Israel discussed in Ezekiel 20, and what the details of the discussion?

8. Give a summary of the contents of Ezekiel 20:45-21:32.

9. What the renewed charge against Jerusalem? (Ezekiel 22)

10. Who the two harlot women of Ezekiel 23 and what the chief thoughts of this chapter?

11. What the meaning and application of the boiling pot and the blood on a rock? (Ezekiel 24:1-14.)

12. Explain the prophet’s action at the death, of his wife.