Bible Commentaries
Ezekiel 19

Verses 1-14

CHAPTER 19.

THE expostulation contained in the last chapter was held with the covenant-people as a whole, and its final aim was to put them on the only way of recovering the prosperity they had lost, namely, by a sincere and hearty return to the paths of righteousness. But in this chapter the vision of the prophet is confined to the more distinguished portion of Israel, the princes of the house of David (for the spirit of prophecy recognises no other princes besides those who belonged to that house); and the only word he receives concerning them is one of doleful lamentation over their inevitable ruin. In expostulating with the people, it was taken for granted that a period of revival and blessing still awaited them, and that the only question was as to the course of procedure on their part which might warrant them to expect its arrival. But no ray of hope mingles with the sombre representation he gives respecting the princes of Israel; in what had already befallen, and what was yet to befall them, there was room only for the wail of sorrow and despair. It is true the royal house was not to become utterly extinct; it was still destined to furnish a head to the people of God, under whom the cause of righteousness and truth was to attain a glory it had never reached before. This had been most distinctly announced by our prophet himself at the close of the seventeenth chapter, under the image of a tender shoot plucked by the hand of Jehovah from the topmost bough of the cedar of Lebanon, and planted on the lofty mountain of Israel. But the very character of the description thus given of a coming glory that it was to be a tender shoot, which was to be plucked, and that its plantation on the mountain of Israel, its marvellous growth, and ultimate unparalleled greatness, were so peculiarly to mark the overruling power and sovereignty of God clearly implied that the prospect was to be realized in a way quite different from the ordinary course and expectations of nature, and in defiance, as it might seem, of all outward appearances. And the melancholy dirge contained in the present chapter may be regarded as supplying the further information, that now and henceforth appearances were indeed to be of the most humiliating kind as concerned the members of the royal house, that their outward glory was waning to extinction, and that they forfeited all claim to any restoration of the worldly greatness which they had hitherto enjoyed. Viewed simply as princes in the earth, their place was lost beyond recovery.

Ezekiel 19:1 . And do thou take up a lamentation for the princes of Israel;

Ezekiel 19:2 . And say, What was thy mother? A lioness; she lay down among lions, among young lions she nourished her whelps.

Ezekiel 19:3 . And she brought up one of her whelps; he became a young lion, and he learned to catch prey; he devoured men.

Ezekiel 19:4 . And the nations heard of him; in their pit was he taken, and they brought him in chains to the land of Egypt.

Ezekiel 19:5 . And she saw that deferred, perished was her hope; (In the rendering of this clause, there is only a choice of difficulties, and it is impossible to obtain anything like satisfaction. According to the natural construction, both the verbs should refer to the hope as their object; and this construction, I think, must be retained. But then there is no well ascertained meaning of the first of the two verbs, נוֹחֲלָה , which altogether makes sense. It properly means to wait or hope for anything; but, undoubtedly, what presents itself as a thing to be waited for has, to an ardent mind, a deferred and almost forlorn appearance. The transition to this sense cannot be regarded as unnatural or harsh. In Genesis 8:12 it occurs very nearly in that sense, importing simply a putting off or delaying from one period to another. I prefer, therefore, with Hävernick, to render as in the text, and deem both improbable and unnecessary the other derivations and senses which have been adopted. The LXX. seem to have had or made a different text; and Hitzig, as very commonly, prefers following them.) and she took another of her whelps and made him a young lion.

Ezekiel 19:6 . And he went up and down among the lions; he became a young lion; and he learned to catch prey; he devoured men.

Ezekiel 19:7 . And he defiled their widows (i.e. the widows of the men devoured); (The literal rendering here is: And he knew their widows but the sense is that given above. There is no good authority for ascribing to אַלְמְנוֹת the meaning of palaces, or any other than that of widows. Of course the image is violated by the lion being spoken of thus in connection with widows; the reality breaks through the veil; but that is no uncommon thing, as we have seen, with Ezekiel; various examples of it occur in Ezekiel 16:0.) and laid waste their cities; and the land and all its fulness was desolate, by the noise of his roaring.

Ezekiel 19:8 . And the nations from the provinces around set against him, and spread upon him their net; in their pit was he taken.

Ezekiel 19:9 . And they put him in ward, in chains, and brought him to the king of Babylon; they brought him into a stronghold, that his voice might no more be heard upon the mountains of Israel.

Ezekiel 19:10 . Thy mother was like a vine, planted when thou wast in thy blood (Our translators have here inserted in the margin two other meanings for in thy blood: in thy quietness, in thy likeness. The former of these two is the one adopted by Hävernick, deriving דוּם here from דָּמָּח , HOT, to be silent, to be at rest; a state of repose or rest, therefore, is what he understands to be indicated. Ewald and Hitzig prefer, in thy likeness. The LXX. appear to have read כַּרִמּוֹן , a pomegranate, and are followed by Newcome and others. But there is really no need for any change in the received text, or departing from the most natural and simplest rendering; especially since the prophet, in chap xvi., had once and again used the same expression, “in thy blood,” for denoting the earliest stage of existence. In his peculiar phraseology, it was all one with saying, “When thou wast in the very infancy of thy being,” even then the mother of the royal house was like a vine planted beside waters, full of strength and vigour; she could look for great things for her offspring.) beside waters; she was fruitful and full of branches by reason of many waters.

Ezekiel 19:11 . And she had strong rods for sceptres to those who bear rule, and elevated was her height up among the clouds, and she was seen (conspicuous) because of her greatness, because of the multitude of her branches. (A sudden change of gender takes place here in the original, from the feminine to the masculine, which I have not thought it necessary to imitate. Ezekiel uses considerable freedom in that way. A similar anomaly occurs again in the latter part of Ezekiel 19:12. The expression עַל בֵּין עֲבֹתִים ought certainly to be “up,” or “aloft among the clouds” (comp. Ezekiel 31:3; Ezekiel 31:10; Ezekiel 31:14). There it evidently denotes the highest elevation, and “among the thick branches” will not make sense. The later interpreters agree in this result, but differ somewhat in their way of reaching it. Ewald and Hengstenberg regarding עָבוֹת , clouds, as one of those nouns which came gradually to lose their plural meaning; and so Ezekiel forms a new plural by adding ים ; while Hävernick, we think with less probability, supposes an interchange to have taken place between the meanings of עב and עבות , so that the latter, in the plural, was used, not for thickets, but for thicket-clouds.)

Ezekiel 19:12 . But she is plucked up in fury; she is cast down to the ground; and the east wind has dried up her fruit; broken and withered are her strong rods, the fire has devoured them.

Ezekiel 19:13 . And now she is planted in the wilderness, in a dry and parched land.

Ezekiel 19:14 . And a fire goes out of the rod of her branches, that devours her fruit, and there is not in her a strong rod, a sceptre for a ruler. It is a lamentation, and shall be for a lamentation.

Thus we see that, in order to make the import of his message more plain and palpable, the prophet gives it the benefit of a twofold representation. But in each case the representation is so highly figurative, that to seek a very close and minute correspondence between the symbol and the reality cannot be necessary, and may even tend to mislead. Interpreters have commonly run into this error, when at the outset they begin to inquire, who is to be understood by the mother? As might be expected, very different answers are given to the question, some, as Pradus, answering Jerusalem; others, as Lowth, the land of Israel; others again, as Hävernick, the theocratic Israel at large; and still others, as Hitzig, the more peculiarly regal portion, the tribe of Judah. To descend upon limitations of this sort is to lose sight of the bold and luxuriant character of Ezekiel’s style; and one might as well have asked, in regard to the figurative representation of the sixteenth chapter, which of the progenitors of the Jewish people could be meant, when it was said that their father was an Amorite and their mother a Hittite. We must keep in view the general object of the representation, which, in the case now before us, was to exhibit the princes of Israel in such a light as sufficiently to account for their being allowed to fall into overwhelming and hopeless ruin. For instead of feeling, as they should have done, that they were set up in the high position they occupied, as sons of God in particular, to carry out in all things his will, and promote the interests of truth and righteousness, they acted in such a wild, lawless, arbitrary manner as might seem to befit only those who were possessed of the most savage and ungovernable natures. It seemed, judging from their behaviour, as if a lioness had been their mother a lioness who had herself lived among the other wild beasts of her species, and who had reared her young amid the ravening and ferocious tenants of the forest. Hence, when they ceased to be under the mother’s care, and began to act for themselves, it was after the capricious and unruly manner of such fierce and untamed natures without regard to any will but their own, and with no desire but the gratification of their own selfish purposes. The particular course followed would, of course, differ in each, according to their natural temperaments, though the prophet simply represents it, according to the image he has chosen, as a catching of prey, devouring men, and spreading around scenes of horror and desolation. We are not to suppose from this that the princes, more particularly in the eye of the prophet, were all alike remarkable for the ferocity of their disposition, and the heartless manner in which they sported themselves with the calamities and ruin of others, or, indeed, that any of them did so. There is nothing in the history to countenance the idea that either Jehoahaz first, or afterwards Jehoiakim and Zedekiah, were peculiarly characterised by such a disposition. The whole we are to understand by the representation is, that like the lion among beasts, so they among men followed recklessly the bent of their own minds, and pursued, without let or hindrance, their sinful courses, regardless of the mischief which they might thereby bring upon the people they were bound to watch over and protect. Their conduct was as wayward, and the disastrous consequences that flowed from it were as great, as if their object had been to tear in pieces and spread desolation throughout the land. So that it was simply to mete to them according to their own measure, and reward them after their own doings, to allow the surrounding nations, first Egypt (in respect to Jehoahaz), and then Babylon, with her multitudinous hosts (in respect to the rest), to come and snare them as wild beasts, and lay them under perpetual arrest, “that their voice should no more be heard upon the mountains of Israel.” Thus these two foreign kingdoms, and more especially Babylon, became in a manner the grave of the earthly pomp and dominion of the princes of Israel.

The figurative representation now given has respect more immediately to the character of the princes, and the punishment it both provoked and was destined to receive. But to complete the gloomy picture, the prophet adds another, taken from the vine, chief of the fruit-bearing trees, as the lion is of the beasts of prey; having respect more especially to the royal house itself, and the contrast between its original and its now altered and doomed condition. This royal house, the source of all the individual princes that sprung from it, is represented as, from the first, like a healthy and fruitful vine, planted beside streams of water for abundance of nourishment, so that she shot forth her branches, which were like so many royal sceptres, aloft in the air, and drew upon her the eyes of all on account of her imposing attitude and flourishing appearance. But without saying how, it is to be understood from the preceding delineation, on account of the corrupt fruit that was borne by those rods of command and rule, this vine becomes the object of irresistible fury, which plucks her up from the fertile situation she had hitherto occupied, dries up her fruit, breaks off and burns in the fire her once vigorous branches; and not only this, but transplants the tree itself into a dry and sapless region, where it could no longer flourish, and where the little fruitfulness that still appeared in it was to be devoured by a fire coming out of itself. For such was the wilful infatuation and folly of the royal house, that even when reduced and crippled on every hand by the punitive justice and restraining providence of God, it acted so as only to provoke further visitations of wrath, until it was rendered, like the vine-tree of the prophet, without either fruit to yield or a rod of sufficient strength to form a sceptre to rule. In other words, the royal house of Israel, as to this earthly power and glory, becomes utterly wasted and gone; the fit theme only of a present and coming lamentation.

A doleful picture indeed, but how exactly accordant with the truth of things! Who but the unerring Spirit of God could have guided the hand of the prophet to exhibit so faithful a representation of the coming future? It might have been clear enough to a discerning mind, from the signs of the times in which Ezekiel lived, that the princes of Israel were likely to be further shorn of their power by the king of Babylon, and possibly even removed to other parts of his dominions; but that their princely power and glory should thus actually expire, that the royal house of Israel itself should finally lose its place among the princedoms of the world, while yet the Lord should one day bring out of its seeming ruin a king, that should rise to the dominion in spite of all the powers of this world, and ultimately gather them all under his universal sway, a train of events so peculiar and extraordinary as this, and so entirely corresponding with the future issues of Providence, could only have been tracked out beforehand by him who sees the things that are not as though they were. But still, let us keep all in its proper place. This wonderful anticipation of the future regarding the house of David was not intended merely, nor even primarily, as a proof of Divine foresight to the Church and the world, but rather as a grand demonstration, reaching from the past into the future, of the righteous principles of God’s administration. It was to embody and exhibit these principles in connection with the highest power and authority in the realm, that God originally chose out of Israel a royal house, to which he delegated, in a measure, his own rightful supremacy. But the seed of royalty forgot the nature of their calling, and abused, to purposes of selfishness and corruption, the honour they had received from above. And as, in the case of the people at large, their falling away from the righteous purposes, for which especially they were planted in the land of Canaan, carried along with it the forfeiture of all their blessings, so in the house of David, their inveterate attachment to sinful and worldly aims must of necessity involve the extinction of all its rank and consideration among men. It must go down, engulphed in that worldly element to which it had so fondly and perversely wedded itself; and there must it lie, till, through the special interposition of Heaven, it should again revive in One, in whom the spiritual should so clearly bear the ascendancy over the earthly One who should make himself so peculiarly known as loving righteousness and hating iniquity, that none could fail to regard him as of one mind, in this respect, with God, and God himself should for ever anoint him with the oil of gladness above his fellows. We must ever keep this in view, as the main key to the mystery of God’s work, the fundamental and all-pervading element of those wonderful and otherwise unaccountable evolutions in providence, which prophets were so early instructed to disclose to the people. And let it never be forgotten, that precisely as men enter into God’s mind, and embrace the righteous principles on which the government of his kingdom is conducted, are they prepared either to fulfil the part assigned them as members of the kingdom, or to enjoy the benefits which it provides for those who are destined to inherit it! For, as it is in righteousness the King of Zion is to reign and prosper, it can only be in proportion as we are embued with his spirit of righteousness that we are fitted for taking part with him in what concerns the affairs of his kingdom, and for rising to a proper inheritance in his blessing.