Ezekiel 6 — WBMS — Scriptura

See Hebrew/Greek in BSB →

6And the word of the Lord was made to me, and he said,^{Verse 2}Thou, son of man, set thy face toward the hills of Israel; and thou shalt prophesy to those hills,^{Verse 3}and shalt say, Hills of Israel, hear ye the word of the Lord God. The Lord God saith these things to mountains, and little hills, to rocks of stone, and to valleys, Lo! I shall bring in on you a sword, and I shall lose your high things or places.^{Verse 4}And I shall destroy your altars, and your simulacra shall be broken; and I shall cast down your slain men before your idols.^{Verse 5}And I shall give the dead bodies of the sons of Israel before the face of your simulacra, and I shall scatter your bones about your altars,^{Verse 6}in all your dwellings. Cities shall be forsaken, and high things shall be destroyed, and shall be scattered; and your altars shall perish, and shall be broken. And your idols shall cease to exist, and your temples of idols shall be all-broken, and your works shall be done away.^{Verse 7}And a slain man shall fall down in the midst of you; and ye shall know, that I am the Lord.^{Verse 8}And I shall leave in you them that fled [the] sword, to go among heathen men, when I shall scatter you into lands.^{Verse 9}And your delivered men shall have mind on me among heathen men, to which they be led prisoners; for I have all-broken their heart doing fornication, and going away from me, and their eyes doing fornication after their idols. And they shall displease themselves on the evils, which they did in all their abominations.^{Verse 10}And they shall know, that I the Lord spake not in vain, that I should do this evil to them.^{Verse 11}The Lord God saith these things, Smite thine hand, and hurtle thy foot, and say, Alas! to all abominations of the evils of the house of Israel; for they shall fall down by sword, hunger, and pestilence.^{Verse 12}He that is far, shall die by pestilence. Forsooth he that is nigh, shall fall by sword. And he that is left and besieged, shall die by hunger. And I shall [ful] fill mine indignation in them.^{Verse 13}And ye shall know, that I am the Lord, when your slain men shall be in the midst of your idols, in the compass of your altars, in each high little hill, and in all the highnesses of mountains, and under each tree full of wood, and under each oak full of boughs, that is, a place where they burnt incense sweet smelling to all their idols.^{Verse 14}And I shall stretch forth mine hand on them, and I shall make their land desolate and destitute, from desert unto Diblath, in all the dwellings of them; and they 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).

Open full in Library

Bible

Translations

Pentateuch

History

Wisdom

Major Prophets

Minor Prophets

Gospels

Acts

Pauline Epistles

General Epistles

Apocalyptic

Apocrypha

Keyboard shortcuts