THERE is marked significance in the scene which the Spirit of God here (verses 1-3) set before Ezekiel in his vision. In the 8th chapter he saw Israel both openly and secretly connecting the temple of Jehovah with the worship, of false gods, and this on the part of the leaders who stood in greatest responsibility, and of the people also. Israel’s God, in practice, was utterly disowned, while yet His name was professed. Chapters 9 and 10, therefore, gave assurance of unsparing judgment, coupled with the tokens of God’s judgment throne, leaving that place which He had chosen to set His name there.
But there was another form or character of wickedness against God, just as today in the world there are found not only the corrupters of what people call “religion”, whereby God’s Christ is falsified and denied in the words of many a pulpit sermonizer, but also (another mark of the last days) in growing numbers are seen a godless party whose principle is expressed in the language of the fool who said in his heart, “There is no God”—the rejecters of any sort of religion. Such we have presented in the opening’ verses of chapter 11. They are seen congregated at the entrance to the temple as though blocking the way where, under God’s gracious provision, a poor, confessed sinner might approach Him, seeking-forgiveness for his sins.
Jeremiah 38, while not naming the peons mentioned here in verse 1, shows the same class of rejecters of the counsel of God. The names of the two princes are significant: Jaazaniah, meaning Jah (a name of God) is hearing; and Pelatiah, meaning Jah delivers.
Another Jaazaniah was the leader of the party of idolatrous worshipers in chapter 8, verse 11. God was indeed “hearing” what was going on, though neither of the Jaazaniahs cared aught for Him. God “delivers”, but He did not deliver Pelatiah (see verse 13). Was it desire toward God that led the parents of these wicked men to name their children as they did, or were they considered “nice names”, and given without serious thought to the little ones?
The irreligious class of verse 1 despised the message of Jehovah brought to them by Jeremiah, and dwelt in a false security, confident that Jerusalem would not be captured and destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, and they themselves brought to death or slavery. Judgment to the full, hover, was hanging over them; the storm, long preparing, was soon to burst.
When God is rejected, the heart of man, unrestrained, lets forth what is stored up within, and murder was common (verse 6), but the murderers were to fall by the sword, not, indeed, in Jerusalem, but within the borders of Israel (verses 10 and 11); for the fulfillment of this promise see Jeremiah 39:5, 65But the Chaldeans' army pursued after them, and overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho: and when they had taken him, they brought him up to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon to Riblah in the land of Hamath, where he gave judgment upon him. 6Then the king of Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah in Riblah before his eyes: also the king of Babylon slew all the nobles of Judah. (Jeremiah 39:5‑6).
Verse 15: Lifted up in pride for which there was no ground whatever, the unworthy inhabitants of Jerusalem, the poorest sort of the people of the land (2 Kings 24:1414And he carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes, and all the mighty men of valor, even ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and smiths: none remained, save the poorest sort of the people of the land. (2 Kings 24:14)) considered themselves favored of God, and despised their kinsmen who had been carried away to Babylon and, further back in Israel’s history, to old Assyria. See Jeremiah 24 for God’s thoughts about the captives of Judah and the wicked men of Jerusalem.
But this expression of the proud heart of the people of Jerusalem only leads to a blessed promise concerning the captives (verses 17-20), a promise whose fulfillment awaits the dawn of Israel’s national recovery when the Lord shall come to the earth again to set up His Millennial kingdom. It is that bright day for which the Old Testament prophets looked, when a new Israel shall he born, that is here in view.
In verse 17 “the people” (properly, “the peoples”) refers to the Gentiles among whom the Jews have for almost twenty centuries sought a home. Palestine is their true home, and the only one that they will be allowed to keep. The present influx of Jews to the Holy Land, while deeply interesting to every intelligent student of prophecy, is not the promised work which will issue in the return of a meat number of the sons of Jacob to the land of promise; this awaits God’s time, and it does not appear that it will occur before the heavenly saints are taken away at the Lord’s coming for His saints, though that longed-for event must surely be near now.
In connection with verses 18 to 21, read chapter 36:17-38, and Jeremiah 31:31-3431Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: 32Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: 33But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31:31‑34). Verses 22 and 23 give the last view of the symbols of the presence of God; they were then upon the mount of Olives, the peak which is opposite Jerusalem on the east, (see Zechariah 14:44And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south. (Zechariah 14:4)) speaking of the Lord’s future appearing at Jerusalem at the moment when all hope of deliverance for the godly remnant of Judah will seem to have vanished.
We have reached the end of this long vision, and Ezekiel told the people, his companions in Chaldea, what he had learned from God.
ML-08/25/1935