Ezekiel 6 — LXXSB

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6And the word of the Lord came to me, saying,^{Verse 2}Son of man, set your face against the mountains of Israel, and prophesy against them;^{Verse 3}and you shall say, You⌃ mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord; thus says the Lord to the mountains, and to the hills, and to the valleys, and to the forests; Behold, I bring a sword upon you, and your high places shall be utterly destroyed.^{Verse 4}And your altars shall be broken to pieces, and your consecrated plats; and I will cast down your slain men before your idols.^{Verse 5}And I will scatter your bones round about your altars,^{Verse 6}and in all your habitations: the cities shall be made desolate, and the high places utterly laid waste; that your altars may be destroyed, and your idols be broken to pieces, and your consecrated plats be abolished.^{Verse 7}And slain men shall fall in the midst of you, and you⌃ shall know that I am the Lord.^{Verse 8}When there are some of you escaping from the sword amongst the Gentiles, and when you⌃ are scattered in the countries;^{Verse 9}then they of you that escape amongst the nations whither they were carried captive shall remember me; (I have sworn an oath against their heart that goes a-whoring from me, and their eyes that go a-whoring after their practices;) and they shall mourn over themselves for all their abominations.^{Verse 10}And they shall know that I the Lord have spoken.^{Verse 11}Thus says the Lord; Clap with your hand, and stamp with your foot and say, Aha, aha! for all the abominations of the house of Israel: they shall fall by the sword, and by pestilence, and by famine.^{Verse 12}He that is near shall fall by the sword; and he that is far off shall die by the pestilence; and he that is in the siege shall be consumed with famine: and I will accomplish my anger upon them.^{Verse 13}Then you⌃ shall know that I am the Lord, when your slain are in the midst of your idols round about your altars, on every high hill, and under every shady tree, where they offered a sweet savour to all their idols.^{Verse 14}And I will stretch out my hand against them, and I will make the land desolate and ruined from the wilderness of Deblatha, in all their habitations: and you⌃ shall know that I am the Lord.

Commentary

Eze 3:25-27

The general divine instructions. - Eze 3:25. And thou, son of man, lo, they will lay cords upon thee, and bind thee therewith, so that thou canst not go out into their midst. Eze 3:26. And I shall make thy tongue cleave to thy palate, that thou mayest be dumb, and mayest not serve them as a reprover: for they are a stiff-necked generation. Eze 3:27. But when I speak to thee, I will open thy mouth, that thou mayest say to them, Thus sayeth the Lord Jehovah, Let him who wishes to hear, hear, and let him who neglects, neglect (to hear): for they are a stiff necked generation. - The meaning of this general injunction depends upon the determination of the subject in נתנוּ, Eze 3:25. Most expositors think of the prophet's countrymen, who are to bind him with cords so that he shall not be able to leave his house. The words ולא תצא appear to support this, as the suffix in בּתוכם indisputably refers to his countrymen. But this circumstance is by no means decisive; while against this view is the twofold difficulty - firstly, that a binding of the prophet with cords by his countrymen is scarcely reconcilable with what he performs in Ezekiel 4 and 5; secondly, of hostile attacks by the exiles upon the prophet there is not a trace to be discovered in the entire remainder of the book. The house of Israel is indeed repeatedly described as a stiff-necked race, as hardened and obdurate towards God's word; but any embitterment of feeling against the prophet, which should have risen so far as to bind him, or even to make direct attempts to prevent him from exercising his prophetic calling, can, after what is related in Eze 33:30-33 regarding the position of the people towards him, hardly be imagined. Further, the binding and fettering of the prophet is to be regarded as of the same kind with the cleaving of his tongue to his jaws, so that he should be silent and not speak (Eze 3:26). It is God, however, who suspends this dumbness over him; and according to Eze 4:8, it is also God who binds him with cords, so that he cannot stir from one side to the other. The demonstrative power of the latter passage is not to be weakened by the objection that it is a passage of an altogether different kind, and the connection altogether different (Hvernick). For the complete difference between the two passages would first have to be proved. The object, indeed, of the binding of the prophet in Eze 4:8 is different from that in our verse. Here it is to render it impossible for the prophet to go out of the house; in Eze 4:8, it is to prevent him from moving from one side to the other. But the one object does not exclude the other; both statements coincide, rather, in the general thought that the prophet must adapt himself entirely to the divine will - not only not leave the house, but lie also for 390 days upon one side without turning. - We might rather, with Kliefoth, understand Eze 4:8 to mean that God accomplished the binding of the prophet by human instruments - viz. that He caused him to be bound by foreigners (Eze 3:25). But this supposition also would only be justified, if either the sense of the words in Eze 3:25, or other good reasons, pronounced in favour of the view that it was the exiles who had bound the prophet. But as this is not the case, so we are not at liberty to explain the definite נתתּי, "I lay on" (Eze 4:8), according to the indefinite נתנוּ, "they lay on," or "one lays on" (Eze 3:25); but must, on the contrary, understand our verse in accordance with Eze 4:8, and (with Hitzig) think of heavenly powers as the subject to נתנוּ - as in Job 7:3; Dan 4:28; Luk 12:20 - without, in so doing, completely identifying the declaration in our verse with that in Luk 4:8, as if in the latter passage only that was brought to completion which had been here (Luk 3:25) predicted. If, however, the binding of the prophet proceeds from invisible powers, the expression is not to be understood literally - of a binding with material cords; - but God binds him by a spiritual power, so that he can neither leave his house nor go forth to his countrymen, nor, at a later time (Eze 4:8), change the position prescribed to him. This is done, however, not to prevent the exercise of his vocation, but, on the contrary, to make him fitted for the successful performance of the work commanded him. He is not to quit his house, nor enter into fellowship and intercourse with his exiled countrymen, that he may show himself, by separation from them, to be a prophet and organ of the Lord. On the same grounds he is also (Eze 3:26, Eze 3:27) to keep silence, and not even correct them with words, but only to speak when God opens his mount for that purpose; to remain, moreover, unconcerned whether they listen to his words or not (cf. Eze 2:4, Eze 2:7). He is to do both of these things, because his contemporaries are a stiff-necked race; cf. Eze 3:9 and Eze 2:5, Eze 2:7. That he may not speak from any impulse of his own, God will cause his tongue to cleave to his jaws, so that he cannot speak; cf. Psa 137:6. "That the prophet is to refrain from all speech - even from the utterance of the words given him by God - will, on the one hand, make the divine words which he utters appear the more distinctly as such; while, on the other, be an evidence to his hearers of the silent sorrow with which he is filled by the contents of the divine word, and with which they also ought justly to be filled" (Kliefoth).

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