It is not necessary to enter minutely into the details of the judgment threatened against Edom. We may simply note that it corresponds point for point with the demeanour exhibited by the Edomites in the time of Israel's final retribution. The “perpetual hatred” is rewarded by perpetual desolation (ver. 9); their seizure of Jehovah's land is punished by their annihilation in the land that was their own (vv. 6-8); and their malicious satisfaction over the depopulation of Palestine recoils on their own heads when their mountain land is made desolate “to the rejoicing of the whole earth” (vv. 14, 15). And the lesson that will be taught to the world by the contrast between the renewed Israel and the barren mountain of Seir will be the power and holiness of the one true God: “they shall know that I am Jehovah.”
II
The prophet's mind is still occupied with the sin of Edom as he turns in the thirty-sixth chapter to depict [pg 331] the future of the land of Israel. The opening verses of the chapter (vv. 1-7) betray an intensity of patriotic feeling not often expressed by Ezekiel. The utterance of the single idea which he wishes to express seems to be impeded by the multitude of reflections that throng upon him as he apostrophises “the mountains and the hills, the watercourses and the valleys, the desolate ruins and deserted cities” of his native country (ver. 4). The land is conceived as conscious of the shame and reproach that rest upon it; and all the elements that might be supposed to make up the consciousness of the land—its naked desolation, the tread of alien feet, the ravages of war, and the derisive talk of the surrounding heathen (Edom being specially in view)—present themselves to the mind of the prophet before he can utter the message with which he is charged: “Thus saith the Lord Jehovah; Behold, I speak in My jealousy and My anger, because ye have borne the shame of the heathen: therefore ... I lift up My hand, Surely the nations that are round about you—even they shall bear their shame” (vv. 6, 7).
The jealousy of Jehovah is here His holy resentment against indignities done to Himself, and this attribute of the divine nature is now enlisted on the side of Israel because of the despite which the heathen had heaped on His land. But it is noteworthy that it is through the land and not the people that this feeling is first called into operation. Israel is still sinful and alienated from God; but the honour of Jehovah is bound up with the land not less than with the nation, and it is in reference to it that the necessity of vindicating His holy name first becomes apparent. There is what we might almost venture to call a divine patriotism, which is stirred into activity by the desolate condition of the land where the worship of the true God should be celebrated. On this feature of Jehovah's character Ezekiel builds the [pg 332] assurance of his people's redemption. The idea expressed by the verses is simply the certainty that Canaan shall be recovered from the heathen dominion for the purposes of the kingdom of God.
The following verses (8-15) speak of the positive aspects of the approaching deliverance. Continuing his apostrophe to the mountains of Israel, the prophet describes the transformation which is to pass over them in view of the return of the exiled nation, which is now on the eve of accomplishment (ver. 8). It might almost seem as if the return of the inhabitants were here treated as a mere incident of the rehabilitation of the land. That of course is only an appearance, caused by the peculiar standpoint assumed throughout these chapters. Ezekiel was not one who could look on complacently
Where wealth accumulates and men decay;
nor was he indifferent to the social welfare of his people. On the contrary we have seen from ch. xxxiv. that he regards that as a supreme interest in the future kingdom of God. And even in this passage he does not make the interests of humanity subservient to those of nature. His leading idea is a reunion of land and people under happier auspices than had obtained of old. Formerly the land, in mysterious sympathy with the mind of Jehovah, had seemed to be animated by a hostile disposition towards its inhabitants. The reluctant and niggardly subsistence that had been wrung from the soil justified the evil report which the spies had brought up of it at the first as a “land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof.”[151] Its inhospitable character was known among the heathen, so that it bore the reproach of being a land that “devoured men and bereaved its nation.” But in the glorious future all [pg 333] this will be changed in harmony with Jehovah's altered relations with His people. In the language of a later prophet,[152] the land shall be “married” to Jehovah, and endowed with exuberant fertility. Yielding its fruits freely and generously, it will wipe off the reproach of the heathen; its cities shall be inhabited, its ruins rebuilt, and man and beast multiplied on its surface, so that its last state shall be better than its first (ver. 11). And those who till it and enjoy the benefits of its wonderful transformation shall be none other than the house of Israel, for whose sins it had borne the reproach of barrenness in the past (vv. 12-15).
III
The next passage (vv. 16-38) deals more with the renewal of the nation than with that of the land; and thus forms a link of connection between the main theme of this chapter and that of ch. xxxvii. It contains the clearest and most comprehensive statement of the process of redemption to be found in the whole book, exhibiting as it does in logical order all the elements which enter into the divine scheme of salvation. The fact that it is inserted just at this point affords a fresh illustration of the importance attached by the prophet to the religious associations which gathered round the Holy Land. The land indeed is still the pivot on which his thoughts turn; he starts from it in his short review of God's past judgments on His people, and finally returns to it in summing up the world-wide effects of His gracious dealings with them in the immediate future. Although the connection of ideas is singularly clear, the passage throws so much light on the deepest theological conceptions of Ezekiel that it will be well to recapitulate the principal steps of the argument.
We need not linger on the cause of the rejection of Israel, for here the prophet only repeats the main lesson which we have found so often enforced in the first part of his book. Israel went into exile because its manner of life as a nation had been abhorrent to Jehovah, and it had defiled the land which was Jehovah's house. As in ch. xxii. and elsewhere bloodshed and idols are the chief emblems of the people's sinful condition; these constitute a real physical defilement of the land, which must be punished by the eviction of its inhabitants: “So I poured out My wrath upon them [on account of the blood which they had shed upon the land, and the idols wherewith they had polluted it]: and I scattered them among the nations, and they were dispersed through the countries.”[153]