Ezekiel 16

Ezekiel 16:1-63

Section 3 (Ezekiel 16:1-63).Jerusalem’s profanation of her marriage covenant, yet final restoration. We have now the long and terrible history of Jerusalem as the Lord alone could give it; a people who, in so signal and manifest a way, had been delivered by the power of God from the misery of her original condition, as born among the nations, and made to know Himself. None, surely, had been brought face to face with Him as Israel had. And Jerusalem was only Israel in fullest manifestation; and not only delivered, but they had been united to God in a way no other nation had, to have their part with Him, and know the full blessedness of that in the midst of a world gone far from Him. They were thus (wonderful to speak of it) as it were Jehovah’s married wife, to whom He was in a relationship peculiar and exclusive amongst the nations, and enjoying all the blessings that this great and wonderful position would of necessity yield for them. Yet they were now to prove the terrible capacity on man’s part of losing all that he is entrusted with, in breaking, as far as he can do it, every tie by which God would bind him to Himself. The long story of this is given in all its loathsomeness, for it was no time to hide the reality of it all, so that it should be fully judged. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not find judgment from God; thus, for those who had hearts to realize it (and the spiritual eye is in the heart) Israel is taught here to judge herself, that grace may even now be her refuge; and, as at the beginning, so at the end, triumphant therefore all through, God’s grace is manifest. If Israel has profaned her marriage covenant, yet God in the end shows Himself true to it: and from Him shall come the final restoration which shall at last openly, in the eyes of all the world, manifest His grace, so that the world itself should know it. This, then, is what we have here.

1. Israel’s original condition is first reviewed. As already said, Jerusalem is only Israel in full development. The city stands for the people, as cities are everywhere the development of man, in which what he is is most fully shown and brought to maturity. The city in this way is notable from many sides. The tendency of men is plainly towards cities; they show what man is, what he can do for himself; as, on the other side, they show his feebleness, his dependence, and how little he can do.

There was no city of God in the beginning. The first city that we read of was man’s city, not God’s. It was the offspring of man’s thoughts and of his need. The city is the bringing together of men in the consciousness of their need of one another, according to the common motto that “Union is strength.” Helplessness is written upon man in his very beginning. The human babe is helpless as the young of no other creature is. The child from its beginning and for long, is debtor to others if it is to exist at all; and for suitable development men must come together.

God has so ordained that full independence should be impossible for us. Individuality with all of us is grounded in some way upon individual defect We are not competent all round. We have each his special capacities and his special deficiencies; as, in the world at large also, each country has its own peculiar productions and its need of what is to be got from elsewhere. Thus the world is bound together, and it is quite superfluous today to dwell upon the need which we thus have of one another. The city then is the natural product of this need; but while it is almost necessarily thus the product of man’s thought, there is in it a divine meaning which eternity itself will recognize in the fullest way. Yet man anticipated God as to it, and such an anticipation is ever found to be without God, and to have, therefore, all the terrible characteristics of this. Those who would not scatter, when that was God’s mind, remained but to build up Babel. Yet man finds the help he seeks. “As iron sharpeneth iron, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” The bringing of men together favors this; and even the more diverse such men are, the more may this help be manifested -struck out, as one may say, even from the collision of contrasted attributes. Thus in the city we find, as a rule, the ripest fruits of man’s efforts, and always, perhaps, his ripest wisdom, but in evil as well as good. And, alas, with man such as he is, selfish ends dominate too largely to make the coming together wholly good.

Rather is there oftentimes, as we know, the most manifest and fullest debasement in this way. What spectacles are men’s cities of vice and poverty, as, on the other hand, of man’s achievements!

Cain builds his city; and his posterity show the aptitudes which are developed in such combinations as the city manifests. But it is plain that morally the development is but a degeneration. On the other hand, in the final future, the city will manifest God’s hand in it -God’s hand in our individual necessities themselves; in our various adaptation to one another; in our various ability to help one another. Love is the spirit of help, and, where true, manifests the divine nature. How blessed to know that His own ministry of love to us all is to be reflected in our ways with one another. The city of God stands over against the city of man, contrasted, yet resembling.

Jerusalem here gives us, in a sense, both sides of this -city of God, as in His thought and desire city of man, as he but too surely makes it. Jerusalem, then, is but Israel herself in full development. She is first told of her extraction and of her birth. Heredity puts its mark upon the pages of Scripture, as it does everywhere upon nature; only, man being fallen, the mark of heredity is largely the mark of the fall. Grace makes us to rise above this, but if the power of grace declines, the natural heredity manifests itself once more. Thus Jerusalem was, as it were, again Canaanite, as it was in its origin: “Thy father,” says God, “was an Amorite, and thy mother a Hittite.” Notice these names here, where everything has a symbolic force, and fully significant, therefore. At the very opening of the world after the flood, as a mark of departure from God already beginning, and so soon to spread everywhere in it, we find the shameful story of Ham (“darkened by the light,” as his name imports), and Canaan is his immediate descendant; it shows us man, not in mere original ignorance of God, as many now would make him, but as one who, in the presence of the light received it only as capacity for degradation. Resisted light is ten-fold darkness.

From such an one Canaan is the natural fruit, Canaan “the merchantman,” as the word is plainly used in Scripture. Canaan is from cana, “to bend the knee, to bow down.” “Servant of servants” he was to be to his brethren; and we may be sure that he was that in spirit, if God puts him into this place. But we may serve it two ways. We may serve in love, in which there is nothing higher. But, with fallen man, this service may be but as in Canaan the spirit of the slave (the “servant of servants”), the spirit of fear and not of love. Or it may be for selfish ends; when, of necessity, subtlety and deceit will characterize it. “He is a merchant” (Canaan), says the prophet, “the balances of deceit are in his hand; he loveth to oppress” (Hosea 12:7).

Thus it is plain what the spirit of his service is. The Amorite comes naturally from this. The Amorite, as we have seen elsewhere, does not mean “the mountaineer,” for which there is no proper justification. He is “the talker,” the man of words; in the East, in the market-place, he is the person who perhaps most impresses you. The merchant, there, is emphatically one who “cries up” his wares; demanding a higher price than he ever expects to get, in order to leave room for the inevitable coming down. He knows the uttermost value of his goods; or if he is buying, how to depreciate that which he really values. The wise man exactly describes him: “It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer; but when he is gone his way, then he boasteth” (Proverbs 20:14). With greed against greed, the balances are sure to be deceitful ones; and for him who is possessed with a spirit of this sort, everything is valued according to its estimate in the market.

Alas for “the Canaanite in the house of the Lord!” (Zechariah 14:21). Here the Judas-spirit develops, who will sell his Master cheap enough; and we see directly the proofs of Israel’s parentage in this way, how the Amorite father manifests itself in her.*
Her mother also as the Hittite is not difficult to understand. The sons of Heth are literally “the children of fear” (See Genesis 23:19, Notes). Such fear necessarily develops where the heart is set upon its own things, and in a world where every one is at strife with his neighbor. In the things of God also it comes in, as we know, in such sort that men tell us today that all religion is bred of it. This, moreover, can alternate with utter recklessness; for such a spirit will naturally seek the antidotes for its torment, which the world and Satan will as readily supply. All this, alas, but too well depicts the history of the professing people of God, whether in Israel or in the Christendom that has succeeded it.

If we would get the profit of all this, we must not lose sight of the unmistakable repetition before our eyes today of Israel’s history. We have it all, even to the Babylonish captivity, and the broken fragments which have come out of it. Go back to the so-called “dark ages,” or find the spots in in which these dark ages have survived to the present day, and see how a selfish spirit of fear is everywhere, and how it connects with the haughtiness of a spiritual profession which knows how to cry up its wares, while it will sell them cheap, too, to attract sufficiently the bidder. The Amorite and the Hittite have left unmistakably their impress upon things everywhere; and we have little cause to boast ourselves with the Philistine boast (see ver. 27) against scattered and exiled Israel. Yet we cannot but notice in Jacob, the supplanter, how these features showed themselves in the very beginning of the nation -before there was a nation at all. But this is all that heredity can do for us.

For the rest, it must be the grace of God or nothing. We come now (ver. 4) to the actual birth of the nation which, as we know, was in Egypt. The forlornness of their condition was manifest when, according to the figurative language here, their navel was not cut; that is to say, they were not qualified, as it might seem, for independent life at all, and thus exposed to death at the very outset.* Nor were they washed with water for cleansing. How they had forgotten the very name of their God in Egypt is manifest by Moses, inquiry (Exodus 3:13); and the golden calf is manifest proof of how the Egyptian idolatry had laid hold of them. Thus they were not rubbed with salt at all; they were strangers to divine holiness and to that power which alone can resist corruption. Nor, as yet, were there even swaddling-bands for the infant nation. The restraints suited to their condition which love itself may impose, and which they were to find afterwards, were, as yet, unfelt.

Egypt had lawlessness enough for them, if it had no true freedom. And Israel was, as we know, no object of compassion even to the nation among whom they had come to be. They were but as a foundling cast out into the open field to perish; as we may see them in Moses their deliverer himself thus cast out, but with the divine hand over him, and a divine purpose in all, through which these very circumstances became the means of lifting him into his higher and God-ordained position.
2. It is evident, then, in what we find here, it is not the city Jerusalem merely or literally that we are to think of, but the nation as we find them in Egypt when under the decree of the persecutor, in their blood, as it is expressed here, and groaning in their bondage, “God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them” (Exodus 2:25). The first sign of their national life and of the blessing of God was even then manifesting itself with regard to them in their multiplication under the very decree of death; and when afterwards the judgments were upon Egypt, Israel, as we read, grew great and came to excellent adornment. It was indeed the voice of the Almighty that had said unto them in their blood, “Live.” And, according to the figure, the breasts that were to nourish her children grew; while even then, nevertheless, they were, as far as the blessing which God designed for them, still “naked and bare.” But then and thus it was that He looked upon them; and for this despised people, mere Egyptian bond-slaves as they were, there came the time of love in which, as He declares, He spread His skirt over them to cover their nakedness. We cannot but think of the covering cloud, and how, when they seemed to be exposed to the wrath of their enemies and almost in their grasp, the sea made way for them, while the cloud covered them from above. Here, already, they were proclaimed the people of the Lord, although the covenant at Sinai had not yet taken place; and, indeed, it is important to realize that this covenant was not, after all, the foundation of blessing for the nation. God had His own purpose in it, and His purposes are always blessing.*
The law was needed as the handmaid of a grace for which the people as yet, alas, were not prepared; and when God looked upon them in Egypt, it is expressly declared that He remembered His “covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob,” and thus “took knowledge of them.” In the same way, at the bush, God declares Himself to Moses as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob;” and His word is: “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt” (Exodus 3:7). His message to Pharaoh accordingly is: “Thus saith Jehovah, Israel is my son, my first-born; and I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve Me.” Thus God’s recognition of His people does not wait for any legal promise on their part of what they will do: and when at Sinai the legal covenant begins, He could already say to them (Exodus 19:4): “Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles, wings, and brought you to Myself.” True, He has now to say: “If ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people: for all the earth is mine: and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5-6). Thus there was a covenant which they had to keep or observe, but that which followed was not what is yet in the divine mind for them, of which the new covenant is to be the perfect expression. Nor are we to confound, as alas so many Christians even still do, the old with the new covenant. It was of their own choice and with the declaration of their own ability -the value of which had so soon to be tested, but with such terrible result -that God proclaimed in their hearing from the mount which flamed with fire and quaked under His presence there, the terms of blessing which they might find in an obedience which was rendered as easy as possible for them, but which, nevertheless, was the “ministration of death.” Hittite they are in their own character surely, as they tremble and stand afar off while Moses draws near to the thick darkness in which God is (Exodus 20:18-21); and Amorite none the less for that, as we see in their ready profession. But thus it was that they had to be tested, as Moses declares: “God is come to prove you,” he says. But alas for the fallen creature under the proving of God! What can it prove but a fallen condition? And Moses’ song long after this (Deuteronomy 32:1-52), a song which was to be put into their mouths that it might be a witness for God against the children of Israel (Deuteronomy 31:19), declares at once the utter hopelessness of blessing under it, and the grace of God which must be their only resource at last. Nevertheless, Israel was here now by their own profession in covenant with the Lord; they had fully, of course, the responsibility of this. 3. The object here is manifestly to recite all that God did for them, and in spite of legal conditions, how God’s grace as well as His holiness was made to shine out. “I washed thee with water,” He says, “yea, I thoroughly washed thy blood from off thee, and I anointed thee with oil.” Hengstenberg asserts here that “We are not to think of spiritual benefits;” and that “the prophet abides by what is palpable, which the ungodly even, whose consciences he wishes to touch, would necessarily recognize.” How narrow is this as an idea, and how little it does justice to what God was doing for His people, in which the spiritual benefits were, as one may say, the whole thing aimed at -without which all others would be necessarily empty and vain; true also, as has just been acknowledged, that the people under the test of the law, would necessarily show themselves what man under such tests has ever shown himself to be, and that, notwithstanding the large outward show of blessing in keeping the Lord’s words, which should have enticed nature itself, if possible, into obedience. They were to have all possible assistances to this, and self-interest itself was to be enlisted upon the same side. Every material good was to be with the righteous; the whole nation, under one government, committed to the same path, was to be in favor of him who kept the covenant. Nevertheless, He who knew man perfectly -who knew the needs of the true-hearted who would experience that by the law is the knowledge of sin -could not but speak all through of God’s continual mercy and the ground of His showing this. The very publication of commandments in the keeping of which, if it were possible, man should live, was a light which must needs have effect upon the nation at large.

Moreover, they had all the responsibility of the knowledge which God had given them of Himself in the constant interventions in their behalf, providing for them through the barren sands of the wilderness every day of their journey -a, constant miracle. Thus He could say of them, in contrast with the terrible immoralities of the nations around: “I washed thee with water;” and in the provisions of His law itself, when seen in connection with their typical meaning: “I thoroughly washed thy blood from off thee, and I anointed thee with oil.” As to what these last words signify in their deepest meaning, we cannot but see ground for it in the gifts and work of the Spirit manifesting Himself among them, the responsibility of which was upon all. From those who have heart for the blessing, nothing can shut out blessing. Nothing on God’s part surely would ever do it. And the oracles of God, which, as we must remember, began to take written form with Moses himself, were as the voice of the Spirit; the apostle Paul puts them as Israel’s chiefest blessing: “Chiefly that unto them were committed the oracles of God.” How much are we not receiving at this present time through God’s word to them! Here, then, God puts before the nation, in its extreme departure from Him, all that in which He had wrought to bring them nigh.*
The clothing with “broidered work” (literally, “variegated work “) naturally refers to the elaborate ceremonial of their religion; in which, although under a veil, all the grace of God was found for them, as far as it could then have expression. What an interweaving of forms and colors do we find there when we consider its typical significance -continually inviting the meditation of the thoughtful; and for those who, stricken in conscience by the law’s just claim upon them, how it pointed them to God’s way of forgiveness! We may see in the 32nd psalm how far this knowledge could go, while here the very failure of the law to produce perfection made it all the more a finger pointing to that which was yet to come. The inefficiency of those sacrifices, such as those of bulls and goats, would necessarily press itself upon any who realized what sin was; while faith, in connection with prophecies given from the very beginning, would find in it the foretoken of a better Sacrifice to come. On the other hand, when positive, wilful sin was in question, the ceremonies failed altogether, and one in sin like David’s was left entirely to God’s mercy, as he also expresses it in the 51st psalm. In all this Israel was plainly under the school-master, and the law was already the handmaid of the grace upon which everything depends for man. The shoeing with seal-skin, which is next spoken of, makes us think of Kohath’s charge in the wilderness, to whom the most precious things, as the object-lessons for approach to God, were committed -all went under the protection of sealskin. Israel was thus, in a higher sense than the literal, shod for the way. She must pursue her journey in peace: and so are we, as the apostle tells us, “shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;” shoes which, like those of Israel in the wilderness, never wear out. The “fine linen” speaks of practical righteousness, inscribed as it was upon the tables of the covenant. The clothing of the priests, and the enclosure of the tabernacle itself, was of fine linen; to a thoughtful mind it could hardly fail to suggest something of what it typified. It comes also in its natural place in the enumeration here, after cleansing by the blood and the maintenance of approach to God had been duly cared for -things upon which all righteousness depends. The word used here for “silk” only occurs twice in Scripture. It speaks of something drawn out (meshi, from mashah); it is an animal product, as the fine linen is a vegetable one. All nature contributes to the symbolism of spiritual things, and none can question that Israel’s was a symbolic system throughout. Silk is produced by the caterpillar, according to the figurative idea, through death to resurrection; left behind, as it were, by the creature for the use of man. We thus see in it the most costly ornament of God’s people still -in fact, the “best robe” for the Father’s house. This introduces to what is more simply ornament, for God is not satisfied with meeting the necessities of His people, but must enrich those whom He has delivered. Hands, neck, nose, ears, head, are all covered with them. The bracelet (tsamid) speaks of what is “joined together,” and tsemed means a “yoke;” thus are the hands still ornamented that are used to labor in the service of Christ. The chain for the neck (rabhid, “collar for the throat”) reminds us of that through which the high praises of God should sound, as expressed in Psalms 149:1-9. In both of these last things the activities of the divine life are pointed out as the true ornament of God’s people. The nose-ring seems to give us the effect for the whole life here: nezem al appaim means literally “the device for the nostrils,” which in Scripture are connected with the human life which is as a vapor in the poor, weak creature which man is; but by God’s “device,” the wonderful plan which these things bring before us, the life is redeemed from vanity. It seems that we are here reminded of all this. Then we have the ear-rings in the ear. The word agil is in close relation with the name Eglon (see Joshua 10:3, Notes), which means not simply a “ring,” but with the thought of movement also, reminding us of what Ezekiel has ever in remembrance, the whirring wheels, the wheel of life ordained at once for man’s humiliation and his blessing. These two things come constantly together, and the ear is truly circumcised when it accepts the divine lesson. “The ear that heareth the reproof of life shall abide among the wise” (Proverbs 15:31). Thus the ear is indeed beautified and capable of hearing aright all other things when it has heard, first of all, the condemnation upon man himself, which, accepted, brings him ever to the never-failing blessing which God has for him.*
After all this comes the beautiful crown. A people of whom the former things were true could not lack it. Israel, when true to her God, could not but be thus a queen among the nations. If she failed, the cause of the failure is manifest. For when God was even in measure owned in the midst of Israel, she stood unconquerable by all enemies. Thus the next words picture her according to her God-given exaltation.

As we see her in Solomon’s time, she has indeed “come to royal estate.” The Lord sums up what He has done for them: “Thus wast thou decked with gold and silver, and thy clothing was fine linen and silk and broidered work.” And to this is added that by which God sustains the creature so dependent upon Him: “Thou didst eat fine flour and honey and oil.” Even in the wilderness, the bread from heaven was given them; not only angels’ food, as the common version puts it, but “the food of the mighty” (Psalms 78:25) -the food which makes mighty. How apt we are to think that if we are once Christians, the character of our food is of no vital import.

How little is realized our dependence upon the word of God -that “man shall live not by bread alone,” but by that which is its true antitype, “by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God!” If only we knew better our dependence upon this, if only God’s word was searched into, not to obtain mere knowledge, but that which ministers to the need of the soul (and there is nothing in all God’s word that does not minister to it if read aright), what mighty men would be produced! Is it not for want of this that revivals, such as are truly that, so soon decline? Through the grace of God, some ministry has laid hold upon men, some fresh truth, it may be, or some fresh power in truth known before; but then, so often comes the lack in going on acquiring and growing. God has invited, has drawn to Himself, and is ready to give in unexhausted grace what would maintain the spiritual life in blessing and power. But we are satisfied, as it were, with the first taste, and go no further. Thus, as the manna, kept and unused, quickly grew old and became corrupt, so the truth once enjoyed, even if not lost, becomes, as it were, without sap or lifeless, inadequate to produce what once it did produce.

And why? It has been neglected, if not slighted.

It has not led, as it should, to God Himself and to the growing acquaintance with Him for which it was intended. The glow and fervor that once was, passes away therefore; and we are brought under that law which we have seen again and again so to characterize that which is earthly -of revival and decay. The unsearched pages of God’s word are witness against us of how we have really dishonored that which we have professed to believe in as, all of it, the word of God. If we are content with this, decay is assured. Again, we read of the manna that it was like wafers made with honey (Exodus 16:31). Honey speaks of natural sweetness, which may refresh one for the moment, as in Jonathan’s case, but which we can in no wise live upon. But the manna, the heavenly food, has in it a power which does not pall; not mere natural sweetness, but that which is abiding. In Christ, the true antitype of the manna, our true food, we find indeed all the sweetness of humanity, but raised to the divine. Such honey of spiritual sweetness awakens an appetite which should never languish. But again, we find in the manna (Numbers 11:8) that the taste of it was like “fresh oil.” So the power of the Spirit is in the word of God; it is Christ whom it ministers to us; and in this there is perpetual freshness, which will resist decay. Thus even in the wilderness we already have that which will be our food in the land itself -the meat which, as the Lord says, “endureth to everlasting life.” This is the application for ourselves, of course. The things that happened unto Israel “happened unto them for types;” yet in all this we surely can see how God was drawing His people to Himself; how He would make, and did make, day by day bear witness to His inexhaustible resources, and lead His people on from strength to strength, making their difficulties only the more to manifest the almighty power which was there to meet them. Thus Israel became “exceeding beautiful,” even in the eyes of the nations around, as we see in the gifts of Tyre and Sheba in the days of Solomon -an anticipation of the time yet to come in which again, drawn by the glory of her glorious King, “the daughter of Tyre shall be there with a gift.” “The kings of Tar-shish and of the isles shall bring presents: the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. Yea, all kings shall fall down before Him; all nations shall serve Him” (Psalms 45:12; Psalms 72:10-11). But Israel forgot that it was the comeliness which Jehovah’s presence imparted to them which constituted her beauty. Hence the misery which soon followed, and which not yet has passed away. 4. The story of Israel’s failure is next brought out; and, alas, all her privilege, her wealth of blessing, became for her only the means of more fatal and deeper downfall. It is traced to its root here, to their self-confidence. Alas, how possible it is for those who owe all they have to grace alone, that self-confidence should yet show itself! And we may build ourselves up just as Israel did, upon privileges which only God’s grace could have given to us, thus taking the glory which is His due to dress ourselves with it! And how quickly pride may thus darken the sunshine of God’s grace -for God dwelleth with the humble and the contrite spirit, and the proud He beholdeth afar off: it is the necessity of His nature.

Sin entered at the very outset of man’s history, by departure from the God-appointed place, as it began in heaven itself. The account of this is given us later on, where we shall have to consider it: “Thy heart was lifted up because of thy beauty; thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness” (Ezekiel 28:17).

So with Israel: “Thou didst trust in thy beauty,” and then, alas, the Canaanite character came fully out. Israel could make merchandise of that beauty itself, and, in the strong language of Scripture (to make it offensive to us, as it was to God), she played the harlot because of her renown, prostituting herself with the nations around in utter debasement. What cause had she indeed to whom all God’s wealth was being ministered, to make merchandise of it with others? Alas, where pride turns the thoughts upon oneself, God’s gifts fail to satisfy. So with Israel; and so with us, wherever in any measure we repeat this history. All that we see here in Israel is in principle only too sadly possible for the Christian also.

Ezekiel has thus a message for us today. The heart that loses its first love becomes unsatisfied with its God-given blessings; the good that is in them is not found, and a mad craving comes into the soul to seek from the world a satisfaction which the world has not, and therefore cannot give.

Thus it finds but degradation, and this is what God calls idolatry and harlotry -singularly strong words, we may think, but only because the true estimate of things is lost. “Ye adulterers and adulteresses;” says James, “know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?” And again another apostle says, “Covetousness, which is idolatry.” The Church taking up with the world has repeated, only in a more terrible way, Israel’s history; and we must not forget this, so as to make the prophetic words but mere records of the past, and lose their admonition for us. Departure from God took its outward form in Israel by making for themselves “high places.” It was but a heathen habit, playing upon the imagination with a worship in which there is no heart, just as men still seek to satisfy themselves with music, architecture, drapery, and that most characteristic “dim religious light,” in which to worship a God who is Light itself, and in whom no darkness is. Such things work upon nature, and produce a sentiment which is so largely taken for the reality which is wanting to it. Thus upon the mountain-tops man could imagine himself nearer to God than in the valleys, and the depths of groves and forests helped, with the beauty of nature, to make him think he was nearer to the God of nature than he really was. There is indeed a witness to God in all these things: who would wish to deny it? Nay, with joy to realize how God in all these things is seeking to draw near to man. Nevertheless, it is just here that man so often makes the fatal mistake of substituting what is merely natural for what is spiritual, and so deceives himself.

In heathenism these high places and these groves turned thus, as was inevitable, to evil instead of good, and the worst abominations of heathenism attached themselves to them. What is figurative in the language used here is nevertheless drawn from the awful grossness of the heathen abominations, in which the lusts and passions of men were let loose as homage to the God of nature, with the consequent degradation following upon this. Israel soon realized all these abominations, and spent the riches which God had heaped upon her to the gratification of those various forms of lust which make the world the corrupt thing it always has been. Under such figures as we find here, the Spirit of God in the final book, in Revelation, draws the awful picture of Babylon the Great, the corrupt Church, in her commerce with the kings of the earth. She has gone Israel’s way, but further in reality than Israel could go, for holy things were committed to her such as Israel never had, and with these she has made merchandise in true Canaanite fashion. She has given that which is holy to the dogs; she has cast her pearls before swine; and she, too, out of her silver and gold, has made for herself what is spoken of immediately here, the “image of men” -men not as they are, but as she would have them: in effect, sacramental, sham Christians, decorated with the lowest debasement of spiritual blessings. But wherever the heart departs from God, it will adorn what it seeks with imaginations of its Own, and conjure up delirious visions, which only show the loss of all sobriety. The false becomes the true, and the true therefore becomes the false. The last step here is one in which the apostate Church has still followed the ancient order. The children really born to God in the midst of Israel, the remnant owned as His, were sacrificed by a people mad upon their idols; and who knows not that, for refusing divine homage to a piece of magically transformed bread, the blood of God’s saints has been poured out like water? If we had eyes to read such things on a minuter scale, how often might we find that the impulses and purposes born of the Spirit within us have been sacrificed in like manner to the self-will that even in a Christian may go thus after its idols. In all this, as with Israel, God’s grace and the deliverance wrought by His grace must be practically forgotten. The way is naturally downward, and Israel leaving her true God transgressed as the heathen with their false ones would be ashamed to do. “Hath a nation changed its gods which are yet no gods?” asked the Lord by Jeremiah; “but my people have changed their glory into that which doth not profit” (Jeremiah 2:11). The Philistines who at Ashdod would not tread upon the threshold of their mutilated Dagon (1 Samuel 5:5), might be ashamed of Israel’s lewd way.

They recognized the hand of the Lord upon them, when they sent back the ark to Israelitish territory; yet how little did Israel recognize or repent under the divine hand which was upon her! “Why,” asks the Lord by Isaiah, “should ye be smitten any more? Ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick and the whole heart faint” (Isaiah 1:5).

But as in a Christian assembly, even in the apostles, days, there had been what even the Gentiles stigmatized as infamous, so Israel away from God became more heathenish than the heathen. Her high places were, as the Lord reproaches her here, at every cross-road, to allure passers-by from all quarters. As Rome in her days of degeneracy, so had Israel her Pantheon of all the gods there were round about her -of Egypt, with the fleshly grossness indicated in the worship of bestial gods; of Assyria, of Babylon, etc., all sought after, with continually increasing loss of prestige and power. The infatuated harlot squandered in vain all that divine goodness had bestowed upon her, hiring lovers for reward, getting herself none, and her portion from her true Husband necessarily finding no replenishment. If godliness hath profit of this life also, as well as that which is to come, how sure and utter is the loss that is entailed by the will that wanders from the Source of every good! The record of Israel here is what we find in the history of Christendom as well, as already said, which has repeated the sins of her ancestry, even though there may be with this the disguise of a new dialect which puts no restraint upon the things thus covered up by it, the darkness only favoring the deeds that suit it.*
5. Israel’s guilt is now summed up and her punishment announced. Her sins are made the means of her recompense, and those to whom she has turned, while turning away from God, become the instruments of His judgments. Stripped of the riches she had received from God, but had lavished upon her lusts, she should no more be able to gratify herself in this way. She had fully proved, as she is again reminded, her Canaanite descent, which was now apparent: “Behold, every one that useth proverbs shall use this proverb against thee, saying, As is the mother, so is her daughter. Your mother was a Hittite, and your father an Amorite.” There remained for her but the judgment long since pronounced upon Canaan for their sins; and Judah was but the sister of already judged Samaria -and more, of judged Sodom too.

She had exceeded in her enormities even these, and, as the Lord declares, had even justified them, comparatively -she had exceeded them in iniquity. She who had judged her sisters must now take her place along with them and bear her shame. Jerusalem that had looked on in pride of heart while Samaria had gone into captivity, and had ceased to think of Sodom, a mere vacant spot as it were upon the earth which had cast it out, was now to exhibit her guilt in her condemnation as fully as they did. 6. And is this then the end? It might seem indeed to be so. What could be done more than God had done, but in vain? If the story were merely a human one, a dealing of man with man, there would surely be no help, no remedy; and God Himself numbering Judah now with Sodom and with Samaria might seem to argue that He had fully and finally given her up. Indeed, interpreters not a few have argued from such premises in this very way.

If Sodom could return and find blessing, then there might be hope for Jerusalem; but was it not already wiped out from the earth? Yet God takes up this argument to answer it in a way of His own: meeting the challenge from His own words, to say, Well, I will do this thing which is impossible: “Thy sister Sodom and her daughters shall return to their first estate, and Samaria and her daughters shall return to their first estate. Thou also and thy daughters shall return to your first estate.” What is intended here seems a difficulty, for it is certain that Sodom has gone out of knowledge. If we look for her upon the earth, we shall not find her; yet it is just of this earthly restitution that Ezekiel, as has often been said already, everywhere speaks. The judgment that he pronounces is not the judgment of eternity, the judgment following after death, but the historical earth-judgment. Thus we are not permitted here to do as some do, and look beyond the grave to find the remedy. The fact that we have just now had before us, that the judgment of Israel was to be at the hands of those with whom she had sinned, shows that it is in the record of the world’s history that we are to look for its accomplishment. It is not a question therefore of the standing of souls before God, nor of individuals, whatever inference we may make, as we have to make in many cases, but what is before us here is Sodom as a whole, Samaria as a whole, and so again Jerusalem as a whole.

God is acting things out before the eyes of men, in order to give the broad, general lesson so much needed. We do right to carry it further than the mere details of history.

If sin is the destruction of any people, it is because it is the destruction of individual souls; and if it is their destruction in this world, assuredly, except God’s grace in some way come in, it must be their destruction in the eternity that follows time. But this is not Ezekiel’s theme. It is the broad lesson of history to which he would call our attention, and we may be sure that these lessons are of immense importance to us. It was for this that the trial of man, through the forty centuries before Christ, went on. And we know how God in the New Testament takes up the result of this trial. It was “when the world by wisdom knew not God,” that “it pleased God by the foolishness of the preaching to save them that believe;” and it was “when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” Thus we may not think lightly of the lessons of history, while there is that, truly, which no earthly history can reveal, of which indeed we must think, and for which all else works.*
If we take what is here clearly revealed, then, Sodom is to reappear in a future generation, with her burden of sin and shame removed, and owned as sister to the tribes of Israel; as in their punishment, so in the grace they can say at last, they have received double for all their sins (Isaiah 40:2). We need not at all be at the trouble to search for her at the present time. God will know how to bring her out of her obscurity in His own due time; but it is certain that for other perished nations besides Sodom, the future, according to the word of God, has a resurrection-time at hand. Nor can we fail to see, if we have eyes for it, some anticipations of such things furnished by present history. Thus has Italy been finding her lost national unity again; and Greece is upon the way to realize this also.* In some cases it seems indeed as if there were to be, not a resurrection of life, but rather a resurrection of judgment. Into all this it is not the place to inquire here; but, for various purposes of righteousness or of grace, God will certainly show, as the Preacher assures us, that He “requireth that which is past” (Ecclesiastes 3:15).

This, once more, is only part of that implied in the revolution of the wheel which again and again Ezekiel brings before us, in which we may see the lesson it surely has for us. The divine Word thus positively assures us that “Sodom and her daughters shall return to their first estate;” “Samaria and her daughters shall return” also -guaranteed by Scripture again and again, though disputed still (perhaps less and less however). The verity of the judgment which has come is only the seal upon the verity of the restoration that shall come. The wheel is, in fact, revolving; and that which brings down will bring up again.**
So the double assurance is given here: “Thy lewdness and thine abominations, thou barest them, saith Jehovah; for thus saith the Lord Jehovah, I will even deal with thee as thou hast done, who hast despised the oath and broken the covenant. Nevertheless, I will remember my covenant with thee in the days of thy youth, and establish to thee an everlasting covenant. And thou shalt remember thy ways and be confounded, when thou receivest thy sisters, thine elder and thy younger one; for I will give them unto thee for daughters, but not because of thy covenant; and I will establish my covenant with thee, and thou shalt know that I am Jehovah.” Thus, if on man’s side the covenant with God has been broken, from God’s side, breach there really can never be.*
This covenant in the days of Israel’s youth we must not confound, as has been already said, with the mere legal covenant which Israel so readily entered into, but which has had such bitter fruit. The covenant which God remembered when He took up Israel at the first was, as we have seen, His covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob; and those three names give what is to be His memorial to all generations (Exodus 3:15). So also the everlasting covenant which He will establish with them is expressly said to be a new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-34): “Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, which my covenant they brake, though I was a husband to them, saith the Lord.” To confound these contrasted covenants would seem to be impossible for us; yet it has been done, and is being done continually. The covenant with their fathers they could not break; it had no conditions which might entail the loss of its blessings. The Sinaitic covenant is distinctly marked out in the very passage before us as not that covenant: “I will give them unto thee for daughters,” says the Lord here, “but not because of thy covenant.” “Thy covenant” He calls it, because man with his legal heart necessitated, as it continually does in individual experience, the allowing of a law which could yet perfect nothing, and with which God thus finds fault -not indeed for lack of holiness in it or anything unsuited in that way to His requirements, but just because it is that requirement which, to those who are under it, yields nothing but the knowledge of sin and self-hopelessness. Indeed that is its true and worthy fruit.

But then, as the apostle says, if God speaks of a new covenant, He has made the first old; and it is according to the new covenant that He says here: “I will establish my covenant with thee, and thou shalt know that I am Jehovah; that thou mayest remember and be ashamed, and no more open thy mouth because of thy confusion, when I am propitiated as to thee for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord Jehovah.” Here the fruit of Christ’s work is, as we see, recognized. The glory, over which the law necessitated a veil, is now in open sight.