The Pulpit Commentaries Ezekiel (Vol. 1) (Joseph S. Exell)

《The Pulpit Commentaries–Ezekiel (Vol. 1)》(Joseph S. Exell)

Contents and the Editors

One of the largest and best-selling homiletical commentary sets of its kind. Directed by editors Joseph Exell and Henry Donald Maurice Spence-Jones, The Pulpit Commentary drew from over 100 authors over a 30 year span to assemble this conservative and trustworthy homiletical commentary set. A favorite of pastors for nearly 100 years, The Pulpit Commentary offers you ideas and insight on "How to Preach It" throughout the entire Bible.

This in-depth commentary brings together three key elements for better preaching:

• Exposition-with thorough verse-by-verse commentary of every verse in the Bible.
• Homiletics-with the "framework" or the "big picture" of the text.
• Homilies-with four to six sermons sample sermons from various authors.

In addition, this set also adds detailed information on biblical customs as well as historical and geographical information, and translations of key Hebrew and Greek words to help you add spice to your sermon.

All in all, The Pulpit Commentary has over 22,000 pages and 95,000 entries from a total of 23 volumes. The go-to commentary for any preacher or teacher of God's Word.
About the Editors

Rev. Joseph S. Exell, M.A., served as the Editor of Clerical World, The Homiletical Quarterly and the Monthly Interpreter. Exell was also the editor for several large commentary sets like The Men of the Bible, The Pulpit Commentary, Preacher's Homiletic Library and The Biblical Illustrator.

Henry Donald Maurice Spence-Jones was born in London on January 14, 1836. He was educated at Corpus Christi, Cambridge where he received his B.A. in 1864. He was ordered deacon in 1865 and ordained as a priest is the following year. He was professor of English literature and lecturer in Hebrew at St. David's College, Lampeter, Wales from 1865-1870. He was rector of St. Mary-de-Crypt with All Saints and St. Owen, Gloucester from 1870-1877 and principal of Gloucester Theological College 1875-1877. He became vicar and rural dean of St. Pancras, London 1877-1886, and honorary canon since 1875. He was select preacher at Cambridge in 1883,1887,1901, and 1905, and at Oxford in 1892 and 1903. In 1906 he was elected professor of ancient history in the Royal Academy. In theology he is a moderate evangelical. He also edited The Pulpit Commentary (48 vols., London, 1880-97) in collaboration with Rev. J. S. Exell, to which he himself contributed the section on Luke, 2 vols., 1889, and edited and translated the Didache 1885. He passed away in 1917 after authoring numerous individual titles.

00 Introduction

Introduction.

THE topics requiring to be treated in an introduction to this remarkable writing may be conveniently arranged under two main divisions — the person of the prophet, and the book of his prophecies. Under the first will fall to be noticed the life of the prophet, the characteristics of the times in which he flourished, the special mission with which he was entrusted, and the qualities he exhibited both as a man and as a seer; under the second will arise for investigation the arrangement and contents of the book, its composition, collection, and canonicity, its literary style, and the principle or principles of its interpretation, with a glance at its underlying theology.

1. EZEKIEL — THE PROPHET.

1.The Life of the Prophet.

The sole information available for constructing a biography of Ezekiel is furnished by his own writings. Outside of these he is mentioned only by Josephus ('Ant.,' 10:5, 1; 6:3; 7:2; 8:2), and Sirach's son Jesus (Ecclus. 49:8), neither of whom communicates any item of importance. Whether Ezekiel was the prophet's birth name conferred on him by his parents, or, as Hengstenborg suggests, an official title assumed by himself on commencing his vocation as a seer, cannot be determined, although the former is by far the more probable hypothesis. In either case it can hardly be questioned that the appellation was providentially designed to be symbolic of his character and calling. The Hebrew term יְחֶזְקֵאל — in the LXX. and in Sirach ιεζεκιηì^λ, in the Vulgate Ezechiel, in German Ezechiel, or Hezekiel — is a compound either of זְחַזִּקאֵל. (Gesenius), meaning "whom God will strengthen," or "he whose character is a personal proof of the strengthening of God" (Baumgarten), or of יְחֳזֵקאֵל(Ewald), signifying "God is strong," or "he in relation to whom God is strong" (Hengstenberg). As regards suitability the two interpretations stand upon a level; for while Ezekiel was commissioned to a rebellious house whose children were "stiff-hearted" ( יִחִזְקֵז־לֵב) and "of a hard forehead" ( חִזְקֵי־מֵצַח), on the other hand he was assured that God had made his face hard ( חֲזְקֵים) against their faces, and his forehead hard ( חָזָק) against their foreheads (Ezekiel 2:5; 3:7, 8). In respect of social rank Ezekiel belonged to the priestly order, being the son of Buzi, of whom nothing further is reported, though it is interesting to note that the name Ezekiel had been borne by one of sacerdotal dignity as far back as the time of David (1 Chronicles 24:16). Unlike Hilkiah's son Jeremiah of Anathoth, who, as a priest of the line of Ithamar, sprang from the lower or middle classes of the community, Ezekiel, as a Zadokite (Ezekiel 40:46; 43:19; 44:15, 16; 1 Kings 2:35), deriving from the superior line of Eleazar the son of Aaron, was properly a member of the Jerusalem aristocracy — a circumstance which will account for his having been carried off in Jehoiachin's captivity, while Jeremiah was left behind (2 Kings 24:14), as well as explain the readiness with which in one of his visions (Ezekiel 11:1) he recognized two of the princes of the people. How old the prophet was when the doom of exile fell on him and the other magnates of Jerusalem can only be conjecturally ascertained. Josephus affirms that Ezekiel was then a youth ( παῖς ὠì^ν); but, if Hengstenberg be correct in regarding the thirtieth year (Ezekiel 1:1), corresponding to the fifth year of exile, as the thirtieth year of the prophet's life, he must have been twenty-five years of age when he bade farewell to his native land. Other explanations have been offered of the date fixed upon by Ezekiel as the chronological starting point of his prophetical activity. The thirtieth year has been declared to date from Nabopolassar's ascension of the Babylonian throne, which is usually set down at B.C. 625 (Ewald, Smend), or from the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign, rendered memorable by the finding of Hilkiah's book of the Law (Havernick), or from the preceding year of jubilee (Calvin, Hitzig); and manifestly if either of these modes of reckoning be adopted, the number thirty will afford no clue whatever to the prophet's age. All of them, however, lie open to objections as strong as those directed against the proposal to count from the prophet's birth, which, to say the least, is as natural a mode of reckoning as either of the others, and in any case may be provisionally adopted (Plumptre), since it practically synchronizes with the so called Babylonian and Jewish eras above named, and harmonizes with indications. given by the prophet's writing, as e.g. with his accurate knowledge of the sanctuary, as well as with his mature priestly spirit, that when he entered on his calling he was no longer a stripling.

The influences in the midst of which Ezekiel's youthful days were spent can readily be imagined. In addition to the solemnizing impressions and quickening impulses which must have been imparted to his opening intelligence and tender heart by the temple services, in which from an early age, in all probability, like another Samuel, he took part, for an earnest and religious soul like his, the strange ferment produced by Hilkiah's book of the Law, whether that was Deuteronomy (Kuenen, Wellhausen), Leviticus (Bertheau, Plumptre), or the whole Pentateuch (Keil, Hiivernick), and the vigorous reformation to which, during Josiah's last years, it led, could not fail to have a powerful fascination. Nor is it likely that he remained insensible to the energetic ministry which, during all the twenty-five years of his residence in Jerusalem, had been exercised by his illustrious predecessor Jeremiah. Rather is there evidence in his obvious leaning on the elder prophet, revealing itself in words and phrases, completed sentences and connected paragraphs, that his whole inner life had been deeply permeated, and in fact effectively moulded, by the spirit of his teacher, and that when the stroke fell upon his country and people as well as on himself, he went away into exile, whither Daniel had a few years before preceded him (Daniel 1:1), inspired with the feelings and brooding on the thoughts he had learnt from the venerated seer he had left behind.

From this time forward the prophet's home was in the land of the Chaldeans, at a city called Tel-Abib (Ezekiel 3:15), or "hill of corn ears," perhaps so named in consequence of the fertility of the surrounding district — a city whose site has not yet been discovered, though Ezekiel himself locates it on the river Chebar. If this stream ( כְּבָר) be identified, as it is by Gesenius, Havernick, Keil, and the majority of expositors, with the Habor ( חָבוׄר) to which the captive Israelites were carried by Shalmanezer or Sargon (2 Kings 17:6) upwards of a hundred years before, and the Habor be found in the Chaboras of the Greeks and Romans, which, rising at the foot of the Masian Mountains, falls into the Euphrates near Circesium — which is doubtful — then the quarter to which the prophet and his fellow exiles were deported must be looked for in Northern Mesopotamia. Against this, however, Noldeke, Schrader, Diestel, and Smend urge with reason that the two words "Chebar" and "Habor" do not agree in sound; that whereas the Habor was (probably a district) in Assyria, the Chebar is invariably represented as having been a river in the land of the Chaldeans, and that to this land the Judaean exiles are always declared to have been removed. Hence the last-named authorities prefer to look for the Chebar in a tributary stream or canal of the Euphrates, near Babylon, in Southern Mesopotamia. In favour of the former locality may be mentioned that in it the prophet would have found himself established in the midst of the main body of the exiles from both kingdoms, to all of whom ultimately. although immediately to those of Judah, his mission had a reference; yet, inasmuch as the northern exiles might easily enough have been reached by the prophet's words without his residing among them, this consideration cannot be allowed to decide the question.

Unlike Jeremiah, who appears to have remained unmarried, Ezekiel had a wife whom he tenderly cherished as "the desire of his eyes," but who suddenly died in the ninth year of his captivity, or four years after he had entered on his prophetic calling (Ezekiel 24.). Whether, like Isaiah, the first of the "greater" prophets, he had children, is not reported. If he had, it is clear that neither wife nor children hindered him any more than they hindered Isaiah from responding to the Divine voice which summoned him to be a watchman to the house of Israel. The summons came to him, as it had come to Isaiah, in the form of a sublime theophany; only not, as in Isaiah's case, while he worshipped in the temple, from which at the moment he was far removed, but as he sat among the exiles (in the midst of the Golah) on the banks of the Chebar. He was then thirty years of age. With few interruptions, he exercised his sacred vocation till his fifty-second year. How long after he lived it is impossible to tell. Not the slightest value can be attached to the tradition preserved by the Fathers and Talmudists that he was put to death by a prince of his own people on account of his prophecies, and was buried in the tomb of Shem and Arphaxad.

2. The Times of the Prophet.

When Ezekiel entered on his calling as a prophet in B.C. 595, the northern kingdom of Israel had for upwards of a hundred years ceased to exist, while the final overthrow of Judah, its southern "sister," was rapidly approaching. When Ezekiel was born, in BC. 625, in the eighteenth year of Josiah, it seemed as if bettor days wore about to dawn for both this land and people. Through the labours of Jeremiah, who had five years before been invested with prophetic dignity — in the expressive language of Jehovah, "set over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant" (Jeremiah 1:10) — and of Zephaniah, who probably commenced his work about the same period (Zephaniah 1:1), seconded as these were by the young king's vigorous reformation and Hilkiah's finding of the book of the Law of Jehovah, idolatry had been well nigh purged flora the realm. Yet the moral and religious improvement of the people proved as transient as it had been superficial. With the death of Josiah from a wound received on the fatal field of Megiddo in B.C. 612, and the accession of his second son Shallum under the throne name of Jehoahaz, a violent reaction in favour of heathenism set in. At the end of three months, Shallum having been deposed by Necho II., Josiah's conqueror, who still lay encamped at Riblath, his elder brother Eliakim, under the title of Jehoiakim, was installed in his room as vassal to the King of Egypt. Then followed, in B.C. 605, Necho's defeat at Carchemish on the Euphrates (Jeremiah 46:1), with the result that Jehoiakim immediately thereafter transferred his allegiance (if he had not already done so) to the Babylonian sovereign, which, however, he preserved inviolate for not more than three years (2 Kings 24:1), when, to punish his infidelity, Nebuchadnezzar's armies appeared upon the scene and bore off a number of captives, amongst whom were Daniel and his companions, all princes of the blood (Daniel 1:1, 3, 6). Whether Jehoiakim was eventually deported to Babylon (2 Chronicles 36:6), or how he met his death (Jeremiah 22:19), is not known; but, after eleven years of inglorious reign, he perished, and was succeeded by his son Jehoiachin, who proved even a more despicable character and worthless ruler (Ezekiel 19:5-9; Jeremiah 22:24-30) than his father, and in three months' time was forcibly suppressed by his overlord (2 Chronicles 36:9; 2 Kings 23:8). Having, perhaps, found reason to suspect his fidelity, Nebuchadnezzar suddenly descended on Jerusalem, and put an end to his career of vice and violence, idolatry and treachery, conveying him, along with ten thousand of his chief people, among them Ezekiel, to the river Chebar, in the land of the Chaldeans, and setting up ia his room his uncle Mattanias, whose name was, in accordance with custom, changed to Zedekiah (2 Kings 24:10-17). This happened in the year B.C. 600. Zedekiah turned out no better than his predecessors. A poor roi faineant (Cheyne), who was quite content to receive a "base" kingdom from the hands of the King of Babylon, and yet wanted honesty honesty to keep his oath and covenant with his superior (Ezekiel 17:13-15), — this wretched "mockery king" had been five years upon the throne when Ezekiel felt divinely impelled to step forth as a watchman to the house of Israel.

The religious and political condition of the times, as well in Jerusalem as on the banks of the Chebar, may be gauged with much exactness from the statements of the two prophets, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who exercised their ministries in these spheres respectively.

(1) As regards the situation in Judah, so far from the stroke of judgment which had fallen on Jerusalem having sobered its idol mad and vice-intoxicated inhabitants, it only plunged them deeper into immorality and superstition. As their fathers from the first had been a rebellious nation, so continued they to be an impudent and stiff-hearted people (Ezekiel 2:4; 3:7), who changed Jehovah's judgments into wickedness, and walked not in his statutes (Ezekiel 5:6, 7), but defiled his sanctuary with their detestable things and abominations (Ezekiel 5:11). Nor this alone, but high places, altars, and images were conspicuous "upon every high hill, in all the tops of the mountains, and under every green tree, and under every thick oak" (Ezekiel 6:13), as from the first it had been with their fathers (Ezekiel 20:28). Whether the picture sketched by Ezekiel of what he saw in the temple at Jerusalem (Ezekiel 8.), when transported thither in vision, be regarded as a description of real objects that were standing and of actual incidents that were going forward in the sacred edifice at the time of the prophet's visit (Ewald, Havernick), or merely as an outline of ideal scenes and occurrences that were presented to his mind's eye (Keil, Fairbairn, Schroder), the impression it was meant to convey was that of Judah's and Jerusalem's total corruption, of their permanent revolt from Jehovah, of their total abandonment to and complete saturation with the wicked spirits of idolatry, immorality, and infidelity. As much as this was stated by Jehovah himself to the prophet, when he gazed in horror on the six executioners, who, in obedience to Divine command, went forth to "say utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women" — "The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceeding great, and the land is full of blood, and the city full of perverseness: for they say, The Lord hath forsaken the earth, and the Lord seeth not" (Ezekiel 9:9).