Ezekiel 21:21,22 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way The prophet here expresses what was future as if it were past, according to the usual style of the prophets, when speaking of things soon to come to pass. And he explains the symbolical action spoken of in the two foregoing verses; he shows that it was designed to represent what the king of Babylon would do when he was on his march, and came to the place where the road was divided; that he would use divination to determine which of the roads he should take. He made his arrows bright The Vulgate reads, Commiscens sagittas, Mingling his arrows; which sense of the verb קלקל, agrees better with the accounts given us by ancient writers of this kind of divination, and therefore is preferred by Dr. Pocock, who confirms it by the Arabic use of the word. It is also adopted by Bishop Newcome. The way of divining by arrows is thus described by St. Jerome in his commentary on this place: “They wrote on several arrows the names of the cities they intended to assault; and then, putting them all together promiscuously in a quiver, they drew them out thence as lots are drawn; and that city whose name was written on the arrow first drawn was the city they first made war upon.” A method of divining by arrows is still in use, it appears, among the idolatrous Arabs. Of this we read the following description, in Sale's Preliminary Discourse to the Koran, p. 126: “Seven divining arrows were kept at the temple of Mecca; but generally, in divination, the idolatrous Arabs made use of three only, on one of which was written, My Lord hath commanded me; on another, My Lord hath forbidden me; and the third was blank. If the first was drawn, they looked on it as an approbation of the enterprise in question; if the second, they made a contrary conclusion; but if the third happened to be drawn, they mixed them, and drew over again, till a decisive answer was given by one of the others.” He consulted with images The Hebrew word here is teraphim, the name given to the images, or gods, which Rachel stole from Laban, Genesis 31:19. In what way these were consulted cannot now be said, and all conjectures about it are vain. He looked in the liver This was another way of divination used among these heathen; they determined for or against certain things, according to the state of the liver of sacrificed animals, whether mutilated or complete, sound or unsound, or from its colour, or some marks appearing in particular places of it, and this by rules laid down among them. At his right hand was the divination for Jerusalem When the king of Babylon stood at the head of the two ways, to consult which of the two he should take, the tokens that were shown him, God so ordering it, induced him to march with his army to the right, that is, toward Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar must be considered as coming from Dan, and marching along the river Jordan. Rabbath was therefore situated to the left hand, and Jerusalem to the right: see Michaelis. From this, and many other instances in the Scriptures, we may conclude, that things apparently the most fortuitous, such as the coming up of lots, and the like, are subject to the direction of Divine Providence, and, when occasion requires it, are ordered to answer its purposes; to open the mouth in the slaughter Or, to the slaughter; that is, to animate the soldiers to slay. To lift up the voice with shouting To make the military cry, in order to strike the inhabitants with terror. We find it was usual, in almost all armies, to begin the attack of their enemies with a loud cry, which served to animate their own men, and to intimidate the enemy. To cast a mount See note on Jeremiah 22:24.