Ezekiel 22
THE importance of such a chapter as this cannot be overestimated at a time like the present, for never was there a greater danger than now, in the history of the professing Church, of a complete abandonment of the Word of God.
A darker picture could scarcely be painted of the awful condition of Jerusalem in Ezekiel’s day. Violence, corruption, and idolatry abounded on every hand. That such things were common amongst the nations that knew not God was bad enough, but that they should be found “in the midst of thee” could only be because Jehovah had been forgotten (vs. 12), and His Word despised (vs. 8). Notice the reiteration of the expression “in thee” (vers. 7-13).
Was it a momentary fall? No, but the inevitable result of a persistent neglect of the Word of the Lord. Not an injunction of the law of the Lord given by Moses, but what the people had trampled under their feet! Let the reader compare the list of charges here brought by Ezekiel at the bidding of the Lord, with the line of conduct so clearly laid down in the law of Moses. How came it to pass that such utter disobedience had taken possession, not of Israel only but of Judah? Was it not that “the book of the law” had become a dead letter to them? Marvelous as it may seem to us, that book had even become lost, hidden away in some dark recess of “the house of the Lord” (2 Kings 22:88And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it. (2 Kings 22:8)), the “princes of Israel” even becoming leaders in this shameful neglect.
And is not Christendom today in as great danger as Israel was then? Does not the infidelity of the days we live in emanate largely from those holding high positions as teachers of the people, both in church and dissent? And where is the honesty, to put it on the lowest ground, of men solemnly asserting that they “unfeignedly believe all the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments” as the condition of their ordination, and then retaining the emoluments when they have ceased to believe? No one can force another to believe by law, but common honesty would lead a man to refuse the pay to which only the sincere believer is entitled. “Dishonest gain” this may well be called (vs. 13), but the days will come for Christendom, no less than they did for Israel, when “I shall deal with thee. I the Lord have spoken it, and will do it” (vs. 14).
Again (vs. 17) the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel to the same purport, though with increased force. What was to befall Jerusalem was the direct dealing of Jehovah, though He might use the Gentile power as His instrument: “I will gather you, and blow upon you in the fire of My wrath.... And ye shall know that I the Lord have poured out My fury upon you” (vers. 17-22). In the passage before us the fiery judgment looks no further than the earth; in the New Testament is revealed the far more terrible punishment that awaits the unrepentant sinner who dies rejecting Christ and refusing the salvation proclaimed in the gospel.
The chapter has three sections, each commencing with the words, “The word of the Lord came.” Each section exposes the sin of the people, and announces the judgment of Jehovah.
In the first (vers. 1-16) Jerusalem, the city of blood, is specially in view; her guilt clearly established, and scattering among the heathen the punishment inflicted.
In the second (vers. 17-22) the house of Israel comes up for judgment; here Jehovah gathers them into the midst of Jerusalem, and there melts them, as it were, in the furnace of His wrath.
In the third (vers. 23-31) the whole land is involved and every class, from the highest to the lowest― prophet, priests, princes, and people. Not a man was found who could stand in the gap. It is an awful picture of apostasy and guilt.
Desolation abounded throughout the whole land, deprived as it was of man’s culture and of God’s refreshing rain (vs. 24). It was the judgment of Jehovah, so presumptuously sinned against: “Therefore have I poured out Mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of My wrath: their own way have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord God.”
A. H. B.