Ezekiel 5:5

Thus saith the Lord God, this [is] Jerusalem,.... A type or sign of it; it may refer to both the former and latter type.

Thus saith the Lord GOD; This is Jerusalem: I have set it in the midst of the nations and countries that are round about her.

Thus saith the Lord God: this solemn declaration in God’ s name the prophet useth by express order, . This portrayed city’ s typically Jerusalem, and her inhabitants. I have placed her in a most delightful situation, chosen out the best part of the known world for her; in a neighbourhood to most rich and plenteous countries, with whom she might have conversed and spread forth my name, and which are round about her, either as servants about a mistress, or as meaner houses about the palace or manor of a lord, or as traders about an emporium, much to advantage of Jerusalem.

Ezekiel 5:5 Thus saith the Lord GOD; This [is] Jerusalem: I have set it in the midst of the nations and countries [that are] round about her.Ver. 5. This is Jerusalem,] i.e., This head and beard so to be shaved. By the hair of the head some think the wise men of that city are figured out, and by the hair of the beard are the strong men; the razor of God’ s severity maketh clean work, leaving no stub or stump behind it. I have set it in the midst of the nations.] As the head, heart, and centre of the earth. See Psalms 72:10 Ezekiel 38:12; and God had peculiar ends in it, that the law might go forth out of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and that all nations might flow into it. Talis est Roma Christianis, Such now is Rome to Christians, saith A Lapide; but lay a straw there, say we; or, as the Gloss saith upon some decrees of popes, Haec non credo, I believe it not. See Revelation 17:5.

(5) I have set it in the midst of the nations.—This was eminently true of Jerusalem, and of Israel as represented by Jerusalem, in all the ages of its history. It constituted one of the great opportunities of Israel had they been faithful to their calling, while it became a chief source of their disasters when they went astray from God. On the south were Egypt and Ethiopia; on the north, at first the great nation of the Hittites, and later the Syrians, and also Assyrians (who must reach Palestine from the north); on the coast were the Philistines, at the southern end, and on the northern the Phœnicians, the great maritime nation having intercourse with all “the isles of the sea;” while on the deserts of the east and immediate south were the Ishmaelites, the chief inland traders, who kept up an intercourse by land with all these nations. Even with the great but little-known nations of India, commerce was established by Solomon. Thus centrally situated among the chief kingdoms of antiquity, Israel had the opportunity of presenting to the world the spectacle of a people strong and prosperous in the worship, and under the guardianship, of the one true God, and of becoming the great missionary of monotheism in the ancient world. At the same time they were separated from most of these nations by natural barriers, the deserts on the east and south, the sea on the west, the mountains on the north, which were sufficient to isolate them as a nation, and allow of their free development, without interference, as a God-fearing people. But when, by the unfaithfulness of the Israelites to their religion, the one bond of national unity was weakened, they became a ready prey to the nations around them. During the period of the Judges they fell under the power of one and another of the petty tribes on their confines; and later, when the great empire of Solomon was broken up in consequence of their sins, they were easily overcome by the powerful nations on either side. In all their later history the Israelites were a football between Egypt and Chaldæa, alternately spoiled by tribute as friends or devastated as enemies by each of them. So, in the Divine ordering of the world, responsibility must always be proportioned to privilege; and the failure to fulfil the responsibility leads, as in this case, not only to a withdrawal of the privilege, but to corresponding condemnation.

Verse 5. This is Jerusalem: I have set it in the midst of the nations] I have made this city the most eminent and the most illustrious in the world. Some think that these words refer to its geographical situation, as being equally in the centre of the habitable world. But any point on a globe is its centre, no matter where laid down; and it would not be difficult to show that even this literal sense is tolerably correct. But the point which is the centre of the greatest portion of land that can be exhibited on one hemisphere is the capital of the British empire. See my Sermon on the universal spread of the Gospel.

5–17. Explanation of the four preceding symbols Jerusalem, set in the midst of the nations and favoured of God above them all, has even exceeded them in wickedness (Ezekiel 5:5-6). Therefore God’s judgments upon her shall be unparalleled in severity, first in the horrors of the siege, and secondly in the terrible miseries of pestilence, famine and blood that shall follow it (Ezekiel 5:7-17).

I have set it in the midst of the nations - It was not unusual for nations to regard the sanctuary, which they most revered, as the center of the earth. In the case of the holy land this was both natural and appropriate.

5. In the midst of the nations — The mediaeval geographies made Palestine the center of the world, and the exact “navel of the earth” is yet pointed out in Jerusalem.