Ezekiel 8

Ezekiel 8:1-11

Section 1 (Ezekiel 8:1-18; Ezekiel 9:1-11; Ezekiel 10:1-22; Ezekiel 11:1-25).The shepherd’s rod becomes a rod of iron. Jehovah had been their Shepherd, as witnessed by the pillar of cloud and glory, of which Ezekiel speaks so much, which had guided and protected them. But it is this that has now become their adversary. Their Shepherd’s rod becomes thus to themselves -not to their enemies merely -a rod of iron; and God calls in the witness of man himself to the necessity of this. God calls to witness earth as well as heaven, in the judgment of His people; after which the glory finally leaves the city.

1. There are four examples given, all witnesses to their complete adoption of the idolatry around them. Question has been raised as to how far that which Ezekiel sees in vision answered to the facts. For instance, as to the actual defilement of the temple in the way that Ezekiel sees it, it being supposed by some that it is God Himself who connects their abominations with that holy house of His, which stamped its character upon the land. Yet, while it is true that all here is expressly stated to be in vision, it is clear that there must be in it, none the less, a true picture of the people’s state. It is the evidence upon which they are convicted; it must not be merely ideal, therefore, but the positive facts of the case -facts that could be appealed to as without possibility of question. (1) The new division is marked, as we might expect, by a new date, although reckoned from the same significant period as before -that of Jehoiachin’s captivity. We have come now to the sixth year of this; and the sixth month of the sixth year emphasizes the thought of evil come to its head, but at the same time with God’s hand over it; while the fifth day, the day of the vision, links responsibility with judgment. On this day the prophet is in his own house, the place of family relationships, which could not be exempt from the invasion of that which, as judgment, brooded over the whole people; the shadow falling even where grace had wrought exemption from the actual judgment. The presence of the elders of Judah prevents that which follows from being simply a private, personal communication. Nothing is said of the purpose for which they were there; it is therefore a matter of entire indifference. We need no speculations to explain what is manifestly unexplained. The elders are rulers of Judah, as is manifest -those who should have maintained judgment according to God, but who now were made the witness of judgment which was coming from God in place of that which they had failed to exercise. In their presence, then, the hand of the Lord Jehovah fell once more upon the prophet. He beholds, and, first of all, there appears to him, as he has seen before, the likeness of a Man upon the throne of God. Again there is seen, “as the appearance of fire” -the holiness of God, which against unrepentant wickedness is wrath, and which takes this character especially “from the loins and downward:” that is, in that which speaks of the activities of the person seen, rather than of the personality itself. “From the loins upward” there is the appearance of brightness, as the look of gold and brass. Thus we are ever reminded that, whatever the work may be, the character of Him who is engaged in it cannot fail to be displayed; and there is for us the joy of this, the appearance of a brightness, which is in fact that of the divine glory itself, the glory of One who is in His own nature immutable, of which the brass speaks. There is at first no vision of anything beside, not even of the throne upon which He sits, no living creatures, no wheels. We shall come to these directly, but we have to notice that here, first of all, we have the Lord Himself. It is He who puts forth the form of a hand, and taking the prophet by a lock of his head, the Spirit lifts him up between earth and heaven, and brings him in the visions of God to Jerusalem. Thus it is plain that all that follows here is a vision simply. It is a vision according to the truth, necessarily, because it is a vision of God; nevertheless, we have to remember that God looks forward as well as back, and that the judgments which are seen now to take place may be, in fact, as in the slaughter of those in the temple-courts and in the city, that which takes place afterwards, and not necessarily at the moment in which they are seen. In Jerusalem, as the prophet is carried there, nothing is seen but its great dominant feature, the house of God which is in it. Here is the heart of the whole subject before us -the heart of God Himself; of Him who assumes for the prophet the “form of a Man,” and of whom it could be said from of old that His “delights were with the sons of men.” The temple is the symbol of this, for which David’s heart longed after as the abode of God among men; of which He, of whom David was but the mere shadow, “sware unto Jehovah and vowed unto the mighty One of Jacob, Surely I will not come into the tabernacle of my house, nor go up to my bed; I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids, until I find out a place for Jehovah, a tabernacle for the Mighty One of Jacob” (Psalms 132:2-5). And where did David himself find this? “Lo,” he says, “we heard of it in Ephratah; we found it in the fields of the wood.” Thus had man treated in those days the token of the Lord’s presence with them; what had characterized the preceding time was that the ark “had not been inquired of in the days of Saul” (1 Chronicles 13:3). Thus has man met again and again the wondrous grace that would draw man to God Himself; and here now, the place of such a testimony, is the very place of fullest abomination! Brought to the entrance of the inner gate that looked toward the north, there the prophet is confronted at the outset with the proof of this. It is the seat of the image of jealousy, “which provoketh to jealousy.” And now, in full view of this, the glory of the God of Israel appears according to the appearance that the prophet had seen in the valley: “And he said unto me, Son of man, lift up now thine eyes towards the north.” From the north, the place of darkness, from where the sun is absent, comes ever the opposition to God: “And I lifted up mine eyes toward the north, and behold, northward of the gate of the altar, this image of jealousy in the entry.” The image of jealousy presents, first, the general thought which underlies all that follows here. God will not give His glory to another. Hence any self-devised image of Him, which must of necessity be man’s imagination, must be a challenge of the One only to be known by revelation, otherwise unsearchable. It is impossible indeed for man’s thoughts to get beyond himself. Thus the image of God which he devises must be only in some way a reflection of himself; but this is the debasement of God to man’s own likeness. The question is asked in Job as an unanswerable one: “Canst thou by searching find out God?

Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection?” Whatever the witness of creation therefore (true witness as it is), God never really left man to that. He declared Himself, as Scripture assures us, at the beginning; and it was man who voluntarily got away from this, banished himself into the darkness and distortion of his own thoughts. And still this image of jealousy is that which threatens us all. It stands, as it were, at the very entrance when we would approach God Himself. And it need not be a visible or open image to do this. What admonition there is for us in this endeavor, as it really is, to have a god after our own thoughts, which is always in opposition to the true God? Thus “covetousness,” the apostle tells us, “is idolatry;” and this, as we know, may be amongst those who are in all other respects most orthodox. But the heart after its own object, seeking that which gratifies itself (although it never satisfies), will have a god according to its own thought; while in name He may abide just what He was, and all the points of orthodoxy be preserved. Here, in Israel, their hearts had got away so manifestly from God that the image of jealousy stood in open sight at the very gate by which men approached God; appealing thus to all, and blocking the way of sacrifice (the way of the altar) which, while it is God’s only way, is just on that account what man’s heart naturally would put aside. The image was in the outer court, presenting itself thus to the multitude. It was indeed the common sin and snare. And we need not speculate, as has been done, as to the form of the image, what false deity was represented by it. The less we define in this respect, if we could define, as we really cannot, the more significant will be what is before us. Any special false god the multitude might disclaim; for man’s thoughts are various, and their gods therefore multitudinous as their thoughts; but the trouble is with the thinking at all. God has revealed Himself. Blessed to know we have only to receive His revelation. How careful we should be, therefore, that we add nothing to it, that there be no mere speculation even within the limits, as we may say, of revelation itself. God’s own Word is best; is all-sufficient. If we add to its perfection, we in reality subtract from it. We are right in inquiring into it, in seeking to know the depths that are there; and if we do so we shall find that indeed God has spoken to us in it, “not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth” even," but which the Holy Ghost teacheth." Were we to say that the image here was the image of Baal or the image of Ashtaroth or any other specific form, the meaning for us at least would have largely died out of it. We would refer it to the past, to Israel, the rebellious nation, and we should escape entirely the warning which speaks to us today, as much as ever, of an image that provoketh to jealousy -the imagination of man, whatever form it may assume. But how blessed to know that we have indeed “the image of the invisible God,” One in whom God has spoken to us, and met all true cravings of the heart after Him, the One in whom we find “the Word made flesh, the Only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, and who hath declared Him.” (2) What follows, therefore, is but a further development of this fundamental thought; it shows whither it would carry those who commit themselves to it. The second proof of Israel’s condition is their open adoption, if we may call it open -for after all, the secrecy and darkness accompanying it betray the consciousness of the moral deformity attaching to it -their open adoption of beast-worship. We shall find much suggestiveness here in the symbolism of the numerals. We are at the second step downwards, and the number indicates descent; but in its ideal form it is for service, as with the Lord Jesus. It is His number, as we have abundantly seen. But the heathen gods themselves came down to men. They had an interest in reference to the things of earth, but how essentially different! The descent of the heathen gods was almost always their real degradation, in which even bestial forms were assumed by them for base and lustful ends.

There is no need to enter into this for those who have the slightest knowledge of the ancient idolatry which the Egyptian animal-worship made permanent, the worship of the animal forms themselves, which (whatever may be pleaded for its esoteric meaning) would necessarily be accompanied with the most debasing results, such as the epistle to the Romans witnesses. For a beast, no immorality is possible, and therefore where beasts are gods it may well drop out of common speech.

Apart from the spirit which God has given him (which often, alas, is almost as if it were not) man is, in fact, but a beast; and thus he can find in the beast that which reflects and appeals to his lower nature; but become a beast, he cannot. He must carry with him into these bestial instincts the evidence of a higher nature, which in subjection to the lower must of necessity degrade itself. But let us not relegate what is here merely to the past, as something of old time which has been civilized out of existence, and which we may well forget, therefore, except as the evidence of the progress we have made since times like these. For Scripture at least the “natural” man is still the “psychical” man, the soul-led man; and his wisdom, which cometh not from above, is “earthly, sensual” (psychical, that is). And more, it is “devilish;” for, through all human departures, easily traceable is the subtlety and power of one who, with no beast nature in himself, yet has led man in this departure. These things then characterized Israel in the awful days that we are contemplating. The people who had in their hands God’s revelation, the people separated from the nations around by multiplied interventions on God’s part and wondrous works of power by which He made Himself known, are a people now so completely gone from Him that it is precisely in this worship of the beast, in secrecy and darkness, that we find the seventy elders, and Jaazaniah, a son of Shaphan, in their midst. What was the condition of the nation whose elders were the leaders and instigators in such things as these! And the names here mark the rapid and complete departure that had been going on. Jaazaniah means “Jehovah hears,” and this name came to him from a father whose own name signifies “one who is hidden” -the name of the hyrax or coney of our common version. The book of Proverbs speaks of it as one of the things “little upon the earth, but exceeding wise.” “They are a feeble folk,” says the wise man, “yet make they their houses in the rocks” (Proverbs 30:26).

This is their wisdom: they know their weakness and hide themselves in their stronghold. And the record that we have of Shaphan in the history (2 Kings 22:8-10) answers at least to this, connecting him as it does with the publication of the newly discovered book of the law which Hilkiah, the priest, gives first to Shaphan. How rapid then had been the movement towards apostasy! The father in the light, cleaving to God and His Word; the son in the midnight darkness, degrading himself into a worshiper of the beasts that perish! Such then was the condition of things in Israel. (3) But we have still further proofs. The next account involves another class from that of the elders, and shows how all parts of the nation were infected now: “He brought me to the entry of the gate of Jehovah’s house toward the north, and behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz.” Tammuz* is a word of difficult derivation, but the history of which is in measure plain. We have to identify him, no doubt, with one better known to us and to history in general as Adonis, who according to the legend, which is told in different ways, was beloved of Venus for his beauty. Slain in hunting by a boar, says the legend, he was, at her solicitation, permitted to return six months in the year from the under-world to her companionship. We need not go into it, as the general lesson is all that interests us. It is a nature picture in some way, no doubt; and faithfully represents the brief and lawless joys of earth under a heaven pictured as no less lawless, joys which soon end in lamentation; along with this longing for their recovery, which in one way or another makes men prophesy this for themselves, but with little comfort even in that which they prophesy: as to which there need be no wonder, no knowledge of sin being in it, and no repentance. *The derivation of “Tammuz” which is most accepted would make it a corruption of tammezuz, “melting away,” and which they refer to the discoloration of the streams of Lebanon, among which is the river Adonis, by the mountain floods. This they connect with Adonis’ legendary death by the boar, but it seems nevertheless hardly possibly to justify the derivation. On the other hand, may it not be derived more simply as tam’uz from tamam, “to complete” (and thus “finish,” “end”), and uz, “strength,” thus giving the meaning of the exhaustion of strength? This seems, more directly than the other, to apply itself to the story of Adonis. We find God setting before us here the one side only, the sorrow and not the joy; the weak and passionate wail over the shadow departing, which identifies itself, as the details of this Tammuz-worship show, with only the increase of the power of evil in the despair of good. Thus this weeping of the women was accompanied with utter self-abandonment to the grossest wickedness. It was the practical fulfilment of the motto of despair: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Yet after all this is not absolute. Man will cling to the poorest and vainest hopes; and in the case before us here we have the distorted, faint image of what is indeed God’s remedy for the sorrow of earth -not escape from death, but resurrection out of it. But this is indeed out of the power of man to accomplish; and has come to us -alone could come to us -in Him who has put His seal upon man’s sentence, Himself bearing it. Thus the evil which has wrecked the world is judged, and we reach God’s side of it; finding not the mere restoration of the life wrecked, but, thank God, a new life in sanctification, and indeed with higher hopes than ever before. God is the God of resurrection, and this we have seen to be stamped upon the whole physical frame of things here, and to be especially that which is before Ezekiel, the revolution of the wheel: which indeed is so high as to be dreadful, out of man’s merely natural ken, yet which, as revealed, becomes with all its blessedness a possession of faith, open to all who will accept the lesson of abasement. This is the only hope, the acknowledgment of a ruin which is at once the condemnation of evil and the glorification of God. The numerical symbolism here sheds full light upon what is before us, the divine substitute for the poor hopes to which man vainly clings, and which are pictured in this Tammuz worship among God’s people of old. (4) The last picture here is that of priestly apostasy; in this way it is the natural conclusion of the whole. Approach to God is what His house speaks of. The apostasy of the priesthood leaves this approach no longer possible; and this is complete in what is before us. “And he said unto me, Seest thou, son of man? Thou shalt see yet again greater abominations than these. And he brought me into the inner court of Jehovah’s house, and behold, at the entry of the temple of Jehovah, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men with their backs toward the temple of Jehovah, and their faces toward the east; and they worshiped the sun towards the east.” These twenty-five men are necessarily a priestly company. They are representatives of the twenty-four courses into which we know the priesthood were divided, with the high-priest at the head of them. They are not indeed spoken of as priests, and at this we need not at all wonder, for the plain reason that they are apostate; but their position is between the porch and the altar, therefore in the priestly court, where no others were allowed. “And He said unto me, Seest thou, son of man? Is it a light thing to the house of Judah to commit the abominations which they commit here, that they yet fill the land with violence, and keep again provoking Me to anger; and behold, they put the vine-branch to their nose. Therefore will I also deal in wrath. Mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity; and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet I will not hear them.” Thus the very ones, chosen out of the chosen nation itself, to draw near to God, are seen with their backs turned upon His house, and worshiping the sun, the foremost feature in those heavens which “declare God’s glory and show His handiwork,” as the Psalmist reminds us (Psalms 19:1-14). The sun, with all his brilliancy and blessing for us, is manifestly but the servant of a power beyond his own, and indeed, as Moses declares in his appeal against this very worship, servant to the peoples to whom God has assigned the ordinance of heaven (Deuteronomy 4:19). Thus in the very constancy with which it observes its appointed seasons, its character is seen as abiding under physical law, that of a servant simply. It is part of the great wheel of nature which Ezekiel has shown us, whose revolutions, indeed, its own revolution marks. But law is the rule of the governed, and not of the Governor. We must penetrate to the Heart that is beyond all this, to One who is not limited by the laws which He has appointed, to get above the necessary perplexity of those who see only, as the preacher saw, what is “under the sun.” Law is indeed most necessary to produce a stable world. Where would we be if we could not trust the stability of the things amongst which we move?

But those who worship it, as alas so many seem inclined to do now, instead of worshiping are merely putting the vine-branch to their nose. There is a sweetness in nature, apart from that which sin has brought into it, which we cannot and need not deny; and for one whose heart enshrines the true Beloved, “the vines with their tender grapes give a good smell” still (Son 2:13).

But if we rise no higher, this sweetness of nature only hinders the sweet savor of sacrifice -of that which is true worship and of Him who has offered it, the basis upon which everything rests now for faith. The fall being ignored, no sacrifice is needed, as is plain. Nature itself bears witness of this, though it needs interpretation. But without God, what is nature, with all the steadfastness of the laws which govern it, but a poor, weak thing fittingly imaged by this vine in which God pictures it -the very image of dependence, as it surely is, with ourselves, who are part of it, upon the One “in whom we live and move and have our being.” Those who are but mere Danites of Ir-shemesh (Joshua 19:41) find, spite of their joy in nature, nothing finally but perplexity, as the Preacher did (Ecclesiastes 8:17). The Comtist, with his worship of humanity, may illustrate in a very forcible way man’s need and the vanity of all attempts to meet it. He is most surely one who is putting the vine-branch to his nose, and imagining himself the worshiper that he is not; for who, after all, can worship himself, much as he may desire it? But here, then, is the end of that which we saw in the beginning, in the image of jealousy. This is what all men’s imaginations come to. They cannot get beyond the nature of which they are part, and they cannot get beyond the perplexity that is in nature, the vanity written upon all that is merely “under the sun.” Yet, thank God, there is a better Sun soon to appear as Sun of righteousness upon the world, and with healing in His wings. Then shall men find how the types of nature are prophecies of what is in God’s thoughts for us; and then shall the vines with their tender grapes give a good smell; not alienating the heart from God, but drawing it to Him. Here, then, the evidences of Israel’s condition are complete. Surely, nothing more is needed. Sentence is passed, therefore, and we have but to see the execution of it in what follows. 2. “And he cried in mine ears with a loud voice saying, Draw near, ye that have charge over the city, and every man with his destroying weapon in his hand.” As already said, we are not to look at this as a judgment actually taking place at the time of the prophet’s vision. It is no doubt that which is. really executed by the Chaldeans afterwards. For the purpose of the vision there is no need to distinguish in this way, or rather, the thought that is impressed upon us is precisely that which the bringing in of Nebuchadnezzar’s host might conceal for many. The judgment is as direct from God as if the Chaldeans were not at all in question. The six men that answer to this summons come from the north and this was, as we know, the route of invasion by the Chaldean hosts. The number six speaks, as always, of divine sovereignty over evil.* This, alas, is now to be shown in judgment. Yet on this very account the judgment must be discriminative also, as the man in linen tells us: “In the midst of them one man clothed in linen with a writer’s inkhorn by his side” Here, plainly, is that which speaks of peace in the midst of all that is adverse. “And they went in and stood beside the brazen altar.” The altar had in a special way been outraged by the abominations practised, and the vengeance upon this is now to be executed. When men refuse the only way of propitiation, there can be none, of course; and as the fitting corollary to this, “the glory of the God of Israel,” distinctly emphasized as that, “went up from off the cherub whereupon it was, to the threshold of the house” -a significant action indeed, for we have nothing as yet here of the living creatures, which Ezekiel soon afterwards identifies with the cherubim of the mercy-seat. But as yet they are not identified; and we are to think of the abode of the glory as realized of old, which made “the Lord God that dwelleth between the cherubim” a familiar thought. He is seen for a moment there again, but only now to show distinctly the terrible change which is taking place.

There is to be no more for Israel the truth of a mercy-seat over which the cherubim bend down to see the blood of propitiation placed there. If the altar be rejected, there is no blood to be sprinkled upon it any more. But then He who dwells between the cherubim must go forth. \ of a mercy-seat over which the cherubim bend down to see the blood of propitiation placed there. If the altar be rejected, there is no blood to be sprinkled upon it any more. But then He who dwells between the cherubim must go forth. This, then, is what we have here the full significance of it will be developed for us in what is soon to follow. But, first of all, He calls to the man clothed in linen who had the writer’s inkhorn by his side, and bids him go through the midst of the city to “set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that are done in the midst” of it. The word for “mark” here is that which designates the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the tau, which in the manner of writing of that time was a cross. Who can forbear, in connection with all that we have here, to realize the meaning of this? The judgment is judgment in behalf of the altar or, to put it in another way, it is that which necessarily comes because the propitiation of the altar is no more. How significant, then, that those whom the judgment spares are just those marked for mercy by the altar itself, that is, by the sign of the cross, as the Christian heart at once interprets it.

As far back as the days of Tertullian it has been interpreted in this way, and all the circumstances here confirm the interpretation. Here, then, is the sinner’s shield at all times, the only hope of escape where all are sinners. “Unto the others He said in my hearing Go through the city after him, and smite . . . and begin at my sanctuary.” Judgment must begin at the house of God. It always begins there. In proportion to the privilege is the responsibility; and the outward nearness to God, with the heart away, only the more invites judgment. The house is completely gone as that. The blood defiles it; and in the midst of the awful judgment which is then poured out, the prophet pleads against the complete removal of Israel from before God’s sight. But this has been already anticipated and answered. The only reply now is the urging of Israel’s iniquity, which is now complete, and God can no longer spare. 3. Even yet the tale of judgment is not ended. What is of the utmost importance is now seen: the appearance of the heavenly throne, as the prophet had already seen it in the vision at Chebar, is to replace the earthly one which God can no more take. The removing is to be complete. He who was once, when the ark of old passed through Jordan, spoken of as “the God of all the earth,” is now to be known simply as “the God of heaven.” The earth is, as we see in Daniel, to be committed in fact to the Gentiles. Outwardly and visibly God’s throne is no longer on earth.

The throne of Gentile empire is, alas, how different! And yet it is the representative, responsibly, of the throne above. Though we cannot hope that this responsibility will now be discharged in a way more according to God than hitherto, yet, even so, God will rather have the Gentile with all his manifest alienation from God, than the Jew with his false profession and worse dishonor of Him by them who professed to draw nigh. The judgment still proceeds; and it is the man clothed in linen, who has been hitherto the messenger of God’s mercy, who is told to go in between the revolving wheels and fill his hand with coals of fire from between the cherubim and scatter them over the city. Here, of course, we have the pregnant figure of divine wrath; and it is at least an approach to that which we find afterwards, when the yet future day of wrath shall have arrived, and when this will be distinctively “the wrath of the Lamb.” How terrible and how hopeless when it is His wrath! And yet how blessed to see and know that it is He who is eternal Love itself who will execute the judgment, and that, therefore, the one cannot be in contradiction to the other. And now we are called to see more fully all the significance of that which is taking place. The cloud as yet fills the house; the glory of Jehovah, as we are reminded here, having risen up from off the cherub over the threshold of the house. The brightness of the glory is rather in the court itself now than in the house which it is leaving. The wings of the cherubim too are in motion, heard as the speech of the Almighty God Himself; and the cherubim are of course no longer those of the golden mercy-seat, which, as the memorials of a mere dead worship, are now left behind. The wheels of the former vision are here also, and ready for revolution; stayed for the moment, as the linen-clothed man goes in to take of the fire (which we have already seen at Chebar as going up and down between the cherubim), and which they now put into his hands. We are reminded here of what has been seen before, that there was the form of a man’s hand under the wings of the cherubim. Human hands, we need not doubt, are to execute that judgment which, nevertheless, is itself the wrath of God. Attention is once more called particularly to the wheels. We have them just as they appeared at Chebar, one wheel beside each cherub, with the look of the topaz in them, the display still of divine characteristics, though in human history, and the likeness as of a wheel within a wheel. There is added here that the whole body, and backs, and hands, and wings, and wheels, are full of eyes round about, the tokens of a knowledge which is indeed omniscient, although there is of course no omniscience in the creature; but they move by a wisdom higher than their own. They are, in fact, beginning as it were afresh their revolution in obedience to the call of the Voice to them, at the bidding of which they revolve. This is no doubt the real meaning of the 13th verse. The pause of contemplation is over.

The trial is over. The wheels that have halted as it were in suspense for the moment, are to revolve again; and we are bidden to take notice once more of the faces of the cherubim as we have seen them, only that now the cherub itself is identified with the face of the ox; which is foremost, therefore: for through all this, while judgment is before us, God has nevertheless His harvest-field in view. But now the cherubim mount up, and at last we have the full identification of the living creature with the figures upon the mercy-seat. “The cherubim mounted up . . . this was the living creature that I saw by the river Chebar.” “I knew,” says the prophet just after this, “I knew that they were cherubim.” There is the complete identification. It is, as it were, those figures upon the mercy-seat that are now manifesting life and activity. It is very striking as to this word “cherub” that only two derivations seem to be at all satisfactory for it. The one is from the word charab, “to engrave,” of which “cherub” would be but the past participle; thus, “the forms engraved.” This suits (but alone suits) the cherubim of the mercy-seat. On the other hand, Hengstenberg contends for another derivation, which certainly exactly suits the meaning of the living creatures, according to which it is a compound word, che-rov, “as it were a multitude.”* But here, not the mercy-seat is before us, but the Chebar vision. Significant it surely is that the one meaning now goes over as it were to the other. The one is, no doubt, the interpretation of the other. But, more than this, the reality is now taking the place of the mere symbol. The cherubim are indeed the living ones, in every way full of life, and standing for that multitudinous host of God which in all His creation ever obey His will.
But, alas, for Israel, the mercy-seat is left, and the cherubim now go forth from it. “And the cherubim lifted up their wings, and mounted up from the earth in my sight when they went forth, and the wheels beside them. And they stood at the entrance of the east gate of Jehovah’s house;” and now also “the glory of the God of Israel is over them above.” It is God who is leaving His earthly abode; and yet even as He leaves, everything assumes a greater clearness and a fuller glory. Notice once more, as we are called to it, the close dependence of the wheels upon the living creatures. As the cherubim mount up, the wheels mount up with them: they leave the earth. ‘Thus as far as Israel is concerned, whatever suspension of the sentence there may be (and which we read in this lingering yet a while over the east gate), it is signified to us that they are soon, as it were, to revolve no more. As far as prophetic history is concerned, we see the truth of this fully at the present time. Prophecy as to them has ceased. We are in a gap of time which has for them, as it were, no more significance! And yet in this very way how sad a significance! In truth there was a longer suspense than this lingering over the east gate might seem to signify. God’s mercy lingered, as we know, over the returned remnant until, in fulfilment of what the countless voices of the prophets had declared, He who was to come did come, and Messiah, Himself the King of glory, stood in their midst.

But it was only to find rejection proportionately decisive and complete. The wings that would have sheltered Jerusalem had to be withdrawn. She had once more to be given up to enemies that would lay her in the dust and her children with her. The glorious vision in the midst is gone, but it has gone in fact to heaven, a heaven which is opened for us that we may see it there. The living creatures are connected with this throne above, which has just been intimated to us in Ezekiel. Israel abides outside of the glory without a mercy-seat and without a priest to represent them before it; but for us there is only a nearer, sweeter vision, a fuller reality, a gospel of the glory which is indeed no longer in the face of Moses but in the face of Him who, Man as He is, is “the image of the invisible God,” the effulgence of it.*
4. We have what is now in some sense an appendix to what has gone before. The judgment having been definitely pronounced, the glory, as we have seen, yet lingers, and I he mercy which is in God’s heart expresses itself more freely, as one may say, because of the judgment pronounced. God’s character being cleared by this, He is free to show what is in His heart. At the same time, that there may be no false hope, the judgment is re-affirmed. We are introduced once more to the leaders of the people who have, as we see, the people behind them. They are twenty-five men (the number of the priests as given before), but these are not the priests, though they represent, as one may say, all represented by the priesthood -that is, the people at large, and therefore are the same in number. Among them, two prominent men recall in their very names the false hopes which are misleading the people: Jaazaniah, “the Lord heareth,” who is the son of Azzur, “the helper,” with Pelatiah, “Jehovah delivers,” the son of Benaiah, “Jehovah builds up.” Their words correspond to their names. These are the men, as it is declared to Ezekiel, who supplant Jeremiah’s exhortation to the captives to build houses in the place of their captivity, which was to be long (Jeremiah 29:5), by building in Jerusalem. Judgment is not near, they say. They infer, the time to act after this manner never will be.

If Jerusalem, in the midst of all its enemies, may seem indeed to be but a cauldron, and “we are the flesh in it,” be it so, say they, we can accept that place with all that we find in it. The words, vague though they may seem, can scarcely be anything but mockery. They base themselves upon such prophecies as both Ezekiel and his contemporary Jeremiah were uttering against the place, which nevertheless still stood, defying its adversaries; so they argue that it will stand. These prophecies are idle talk, say they, suited enough for exiles whom the land has already cast out, and who have forfeited the privileges of the chosen people. For us, they say, we need not fear them. Swiftly as the destruction was coming, God yet meets this with another prophetic warning. He who was acquainted with all their thoughts, would give them presently their full answer. Already the prophet sees the slain in the city, slain at the hands of those who have misled them. These would fulfil the figure, and be, manifestly enough, the flesh in the cauldron; but for themselves, the deceivers of the people, there waited still a severer judgment. God would not suffer the city to be even the tomb of such. The sword which they defied, even while they trembled at it, Jehovah would bring upon them, taking them out of the midst of the city which they had profaned, to fall by the sword in the border of Israel; they would witness before their death the calamities which they had brought upon the people. Cast out of the city, they would be judged in the border of Israel, and should learn there, to their utter confusion, that it was Jehovah who had been speaking to them -Jehovah, whose ordinances they had transgressed, while they claimed the privileges which belonged to His elect, and had gone after the ordinances of the nations around them.*
While Ezekiel thus prophesies, one of these leaders, the man whose name falsely spoke of deliverance and building up, Pelatiah, died. Vision it is still; yet one would naturally argue that this was, in fact, an actual occurrence at the time. Such a proof has constantly accompanied true prophecy, that God was speaking in it. There was to be no deliverance nor building up in the way that they imagined to themselves; but, as before, the heart of the prophet, standing truly before God for the people, trembles at the judgment manifested, and again there is a question in his heart, as has been uttered before, whether any can survive it. “Ah, Lord Jehovah,” he cries “wilt Thou make a full end of the remnant of Israel?” But this had been already answered again and again. It is but a moment of dismay; a confusion which the Lord answers in grace, explaining to him that these people, the objects of His divine judgment, are not such a remnant. His brethren, such as the prophet could truly own as kindred, those who truly represent the house of Israel, are not such men as these, but have characteristically their position among those very exiles to whom the then inhabitants of Jerusalem were saying, “Get you far from Jehovah,” as having no claim upon Him. In their own possession the land still was, and so, they argued, it would continue. Was not the condition of those in exile a plain proof of the displeasure of God against them? Nay, says the Lord: it is amongst these that I am, and though it is true that in this national breach of the covenant they are removed far off among the nations and scattered among the countries, and though they have lost the recognized sanctuary in Jerusalem, yet I Myself will be to them for a little sanctuary in the countries whither they come. It was not indeed all that they were looking for, and might look for yet, it was an unseen Presence that was with them.

The glory was unseen, save by such opened eyes as were those of Ezekiel . Nevertheless, in the “remnant according to the election of grace,” as the apostle speaks afterwards, there was the assurance of what grace would be in its fulness when the time should come for the completion of those promises which God had unconditionally made, and which, therefore, He would fulfil. The sap of life was in the tree, although it was a tree cut down; and it would in due time manifest itself in the renewal of all they had departed from, and much more: “Thus saith the Lord Jehovah” -it is the exiles plainly to whom He is turning, He has no promise for the doomed inhabitants of the city itself -“I will even gather you from the peoples, and assemble you out of the countries where ye are scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.” But along with this there must be and would be, therefore, the return of heart to God which would alone be the fulfilment of such promises. The terms of the new covenant must be fulfilled, and they would contemplate not the mere setting up again of the glory that had departed, but much more, the inward renewal, in which alone they would be manifested as the true seed of Abraham and the heirs of all that God had promised to him Here, it is plain, we go far beyond the mere return of a remnant out of Babylon, such as took place under the Persian kings. This was, according to the Lord’s figure, but a fig-tree planted in the vineyard, under conditions of fruit-bearing, which were not fulfilled; and when He who was to come, and did come, seeking fruit upon the fig-tree and finding none, according to His word it withered away. But this could not be the end of the promise -the free and unchangeable promise of God, which never can be taken away from the people to whom He made it. And the words of Jehovah here look on to an end not come even yet, but which through all the length of time elapsed He has never forgotten: “They shall come thither,” says the Lord; “and they shall take away from thence all its detestable things, and all its abominations; and I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of their flesh and will give them a heart of flesh that they may walk in my statutes, and keep my ordinances, and do them; and they shall be my people and I will be their God.” This, then, is afresh certified with all the assurance of God’s word, and in plain view of all that has just before been denounced in the way of judgment. Nay, it is repeated here: “But as for them whose heart walketh heartily after their detestable things and their abominations, I will recompense their way upon their heads, saith the Lord Jehovah.” And now the breach between the city and the Lord is consummated: “And the glory of Jehovah went up from the midst of the city, and stood upon the mountain which is on the east side of the city” -the Mount of Olives. How it reminds us of how the Lord Himself took leave of the same city from the same place! Refused by the world, and risen from the dead, He went up finally to heaven in the eyes of His disciples from the Mount of Olives once more. The angels prophesy His return, as Zechariah had prophesied it long before. For us, the Mount of Olives with its Bethany home, is the witness of what is ours in the meantime. Olivet is the memorial of the spiritual unction which has been poured out upon us, anointed with which we wait for His return.

Meanwhile, in widowed loneliness, God’s earthly city waits also; but in how different a manner! Her captivity has been unbroken ever since, and it is to the men of the captivity that the prophet now returns. “The Spirit lifted me up and brought me in the vision by the Spirit of God unto Chaldea to them of the captivity, and the vision that I had seen went up from me.” In principle, the story is told out, although there may be many and important details that are to follow. What a word for the elders who had been waiting all this time the result of this prophetic rapture: “I spake unto them of the captivity all the things that Jehovah had shown me.”