The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Ezekiel

by John Skinner

Chapter XIV. Final Oracles Against Jerusalem. Chapters xxii., xxiv.

The close of the first period of Ezekiel's work was marked by two dramatic incidents, which made the day memorable both in the private life of the prophet and in the history of the nation. In the first place it coincided exactly with the commencement of the siege of Jerusalem. The prophet's mysterious knowledge of what was happening at a distance was duly recorded, in order that its subsequent confirmation through the ordinary channels of intelligence might prove the divine origin of his message (ch. xxiv. 1, 2). That Ezekiel actually did this we have no reason to doubt. Then the sudden death of his wife on the evening of the same day, and his unusual behaviour under the bereavement, caused a sensation among the exiles which the prophet was instructed to utilise as a means of driving home the appeal just made to them. These transactions must have had a profound effect on Ezekiel's fellow-captives. They made his personality the centre of absorbing interest to the Jews in Babylon; and the two years of silence on his part which ensued were to them years of anxious foreboding about the result of the siege.

At this juncture the prophet's thoughts naturally are occupied with the subject which hitherto formed the principal burden of his prophecy. The first part of his career accordingly closes, as it had begun, with a symbol [pg 198] of the fall of Jerusalem. Before this, however, he had drawn out the solemn indictment against Jerusalem which is given in ch. xxii., although the finishing touches were probably added after the destruction of the city. The substance of that chapter is so closely related to the symbolic representation in the first part of ch. xxiv. that it will be convenient to consider it here as an introduction to the concluding oracles addressed more directly to the exiles of Tel-abib.

I

The purpose of this arraignment—the most stately of Ezekiel's orations—is to exhibit Jerusalem in her true character as a city whose social condition is incurably corrupt. It begins with an enumeration of the prevalent sins of the capital (vv. 2-16); it ends with a denunciation of the various classes into which society was divided (vv. 23-31); while the short intervening passage is a figurative description of the judgment which is now inevitable (vv. 17-22).

1. The first part of the chapter, then, is a catalogue of the “abominations” which called down the vengeance of Heaven upon the city of Jerusalem. The offences enumerated are nearly the same as those mentioned in the definitions of personal righteousness and wickedness given in ch. xviii. It is not necessary to repeat what was there said about the characteristics of the moral ideal which had been formed in the mind of Ezekiel. Although he is dealing now with a society, his point of view is quite different from that represented by purely allegorical passages like chs. xvi. and xxiii. The city is not idealised and treated as a moral individual, whose relations to Jehovah have to be set forth in symbolic and figurative language. It is conceived as an aggregate of [pg 199] individuals bound together in social relations; and the sins charged against it are the actual transgressions of the men who are members of the community. Hence the standard of public morality is precisely the same as that which is elsewhere applied to the individual in his personal relation to God; and the sins enumerated are attributed to the city merely because they are tolerated and encouraged in individuals by laxity of public opinion and the force of evil example. Jerusalem is a community in which these different crimes are perpetrated: “Father and mother are despised in thee; the stranger is oppressed in the midst of thee; orphan and widow are wronged in thee; slanderous men seeking blood have been in thee; flesh with the blood is eaten in thee; lewdness is committed in the midst of thee; the father's shame is uncovered in thee; she that was unclean in her separation hath been humbled in thee.” So the grave and measured indictment runs on. It is because of these things that Jerusalem as a whole is “guilty” and “unclean” and has brought near her day of retribution (ver. 4). Such a conception of corporate guilt undoubtedly appeals more directly to our ordinary conscience of public morality than the more poetic representations where Jerusalem is compared to a faithless and treacherous woman. We have no difficulty in judging of any modern city in the very same way as Ezekiel here judges Jerusalem; and in this respect it is interesting to notice the social evils which he regards as marking out that city as ripe for destruction.

There are three features of the state of things in Jerusalem in which the prophet recognises the symptoms of an incurable social condition. The first is the loss of a true conception of God. In ancient Israel this defect necessarily assumed the form of idolatry. Hence the multiplication of idols appropriately finds a place among the marks of the “uncleanness” which made Jerusalem hateful [pg 200] in the eyes of Jehovah (ver. 3). But the root of idolatry in Israel was the incapacity or the unwillingness of the people to live up to the lofty conception of the divine nature which was taught by the prophets. Throughout the ancient world religion was felt to be the indispensable bond of society, and the gods that were worshipped reflected more or less fully the ideals that swayed the life of the community. To Israel the religion of Jehovah represented the highest social ideal that was then known on earth. It meant righteousness, and purity, and brotherhood, and compassion for the poor and distressed. When these virtues decayed she forgot Jehovah (ver. 12)—forgot His character even if she remembered His name—and the service of false gods was the natural and obvious expression of the fact. There is therefore a profound truth in Ezekiel's mind when he numbers the idols of Jerusalem amongst the indications of a degenerate society. They were the evidence that she had lost the sense of God as a holy and righteous spiritual presence in her midst, and that loss was at once the source and the symptom of widespread moral declension. It is one of the chief lessons of the Old Testament that a religion which was neither the product of national genius nor the embodiment of national aspiration, but was based on supernatural revelation, proved itself in the history of Israel to be the only possible safeguard against the tendencies which made for social disintegration.

A second mark of depravity which Ezekiel discovers in the capital is the perversion of certain moral instincts which are just as essential to the preservation of society as a true conception of God. For if society rests at one end on religion, it rests at the other on instinct. The closest and most fundamental of human relations depend on innate perceptions which may be easily destroyed, but which when destroyed can scarcely be recovered. The [pg 201] sanctities of marriage and the family will hardly bear the coarse scrutiny of utilitarian ethics; yet they are the foundation on which the whole social fabric is built. And there is no part of Ezekiel's indictment of Jerusalem which conveys to our minds a more vivid sense of utter corruption than where he speaks of the loss of filial piety and revolting forms of sexual impurity as prevalent sins in the city. Here at least he carries the conviction of every moralist with him. He instances no offence of this kind which would not be branded as unnatural by any system of ethics as heartily as it is by the Old Testament. It is possible, on the other hand, that he ranks on the same level with these sins ceremonial impurities appealing to feelings of a different order, to which no permanent moral value can be attached. When, for example, he instances eating with the blood[65] as an “abomination,” he appeals to a law which is no longer binding on us. But even that regulation was not so worthless, from a moral point of view, at that time as we are apt to suppose. The abhorrence of eating blood was connected with certain sacrificial ideas which attributed a mystic significance to the blood as the seat of animal life. So long as these ideas existed no man could commit this offence without injuring his moral nature and loosening the divine sanctions of morality as a whole. It is a false illuminism which seeks to disparage the moral insight of the prophet on the ground that he did not teach an abstract system of ethics in which ceremonial precepts were sharply distinguished from duties which we consider moral.[66]

The third feature of Jerusalem's guilty condition is lawless violation of human rights. Neither life nor property was secure. Judicial murders were frequent in the city, and minor forms of oppression, such as usury, spoliation of the unprotected, and robbery, were of daily occurrence. The administration of justice was corrupted by systematic bribery and perjury, and the lives of innocent men were ruthlessly sacrificed under the forms of law. This after all is the aspect of things which bulks most largely in the prophet's indictment. Jerusalem is addressed as a “city shedding blood in her midst,” and throughout the accusation the charge of bloodshed is that which constantly recurs. Misgovernment and party strife, and perhaps religious persecution, had converted the city into a vast human shambles, and the blood of the innocent slain cried aloud to heaven for vengeance. “Of what avail,” asks the prophet, “are the stores of wealth piled up in the hands of a few against this damning witness of blood? Jehovah smites His hand [in derision] against her gains that she has made, and against her blood which is in her midst. How can her heart stand or her hands be strong in the days when He deals with her?” (vv. 13, 14). Drained of her best blood, given over to internecine strife, and stricken with the cowardice of conscious guilt, Jerusalem, already disgraced among the nations, must fall an easy victim to the Chaldæan invaders, who are the agents of Jehovah's judgments.