Ezekiel 14:15-21 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

If I cause noisome beasts to pass through the land We find it was one punishment of the inhabitants of Judea, to be infested by lions and other wild beasts. To this their neighbourhood to the deserts of Arabia exposed them; and God, at certain times, to punish them for their sins, either by causing a scarcity of food in the deserts, or by some other means, influenced these wild beasts to make incursions into Judea, in great numbers, which they otherwise were not wont to do. Or if I bring a sword upon that land, &c. “If I deliver a land into the hand of a cruel enemy. The conquerors' sword is often called the sword of the Lord, in the prophets, because they are the executioners of God's judgments.” So that I cut off man and beast from it “Men are destroyed by the sword, and the cattle are driven away by the enemy; or else consumed by pestilence, arising from the air's being corrupted through the stench of dead bodies.” Or I send pestilence, and pour out my fury in blood With great destruction of men's lives, Ezekiel 38:22; for every kind of sudden and immature death is called blood in the Hebrew. How much more Shall there be an utter destruction; when I send my four sore judgments upon Jerusalem “If it is just, with respect to other countries, that the good alone should escape punishment, how much more with respect to Jerusalem, after such repeated instructions and admonitions?” And if the intercessions of such holy men as those above mentioned could not prevent the execution of one of these four judgments upon those that had filled up the measure of their iniquities, how much less would they be able to keep off all the four, when I commission them all to come at once?