THE FIRE AND SWORD OF DIVINE JUSTICE GO FORTH AGAINST HEATHENISED JERUSALEM. (Chap. 21).
EXEGETICAL NOTES.—The people had turned all their hopes towards the mother country,—the city and kingdom. The prophet shows this to be a delusion. The sword of the Lord will cut off Jerusalem and the land of Israel, both righteous and wicked. (Ezekiel 21:1-17). The instrument to be used is the king of Babylon, who will draw his sword against Jerusalem and the children of Ammon, first putting an end to the kingdom of Judah, and then destroying the Ammonites (Ezekiel 21:18-23). The design is, to withdraw the people from their delusions, and to teach them that they must trust no longer in human policy but rather in repentance towards God.
Ezekiel 21:1-7. The sword of the Lord is to be drawn against Jerusalem, in which the people placed all their confidence.
Ezekiel 21:2. “The holy places.” “Heb. sanctuaries. These include not only the temple with its holy places, but also the other edifices appropriated in purer times to Divine worship, and afterwards called synagogues” (Psalms 73:17)—(Henderson). Hengstenberg refers the plural to the glory of the one sanctuary, and understands it of “the spiritual abode of the people.” Others account for the plural form of the word by understanding it of the individual buildings of the temple, its two or three parts.” “The land of Israel.” Equivalent to “the forest of the south field.” (Ezekiel 20:46).
Ezekiel 21:3. “My sword.” “The fire kindled by the Lord is interpreted as being the sword of the Lord. It is true that this is a figurative expression; but it is commonly used for war, which brings with it devastation and death, and would be generally intelligible.”—(Keil.) “Out of his sheath.” The sword of God had rested in its sheath for above 400 years. In the days of David it was suspended over Jerusalem; but the arm of the Destroying Angel was then “stayed.” David by God’s direction offered burnt-offerings on the very place where the temple was afterwards built; and the destroying sword was returned “into the sheath thereof” (1 Chronicles 21:16; 1 Chronicles 21:27; 1 Chronicles 22:1). God’s forbearance was the sheath in which it rested so long. Now Israel had become heathenized, the vile profanation of God’s altar was no longer to be endured, and the sword must again leave its scabbard. “The righteous and the wicked.” “This is not in contradiction with Ezekiel 9:4, according to which the righteous, amidst the impending catastrophe, are the object of the protecting and sustaining activity of God. For if two suffer the same, yet it is not the same. To those who love God must all things be for the best” (Romans 8:28).—(Hengstenberg.) “There is no real contradiction between the doctrine taught in this passage, and that vindicated ch. 18. Though removed from their native land along with the wicked, inasmuch as they were nationally connected with them, yet the righteous were to be regarded only as the subjects of corrective discipline, whereas to the idolatrous Jews the sufferings were unmitigated punishment.”—(Henderson.)
Ezekiel 21:4. “From the south to the north.” The whole extent of the country, from Dan to Beersheba.
Ezekiel 21:5. “It shall not return any more.” It shall go on to make a full end. The same idea as in Ezekiel 20:48, where it is stated that the fire of God’s judgments shall not be quenched.
Ezekiel 21:6. “Sigh, therefore, thou son of man, with the breaking of thy loins.” The loins are said to be broken when acute pain robs a man of all power and strength (Deuteronomy 33:11). “The more deeply to affect his countrymen with a sense of the dire calamities which were so soon to overtake them, the prophet is commanded openly to assume the appearance of a person in deep distress, clasping his loins with his hands, as sadly bruised; and, giving utterance to piteous groans in the bitterness of his spirit, he was to present himself before them.”—(Henderson.)
Ezekiel 21:7. “For the tidings, because it cometh.” “That which to others is merely tidings, is to the prophet already coming, or it is to him a ‘thing heard’ which is passing into fulfilment; therefore his pain. But they shall be compelled to experience in themselves what they perceive in him. In all, courage gives place to terror, activity to prostration, counsel to perplexity. NO one holds out any longer.”—(Lange.) “All knees shall be weak as water.” They become like water in laxity and incoherence. Their strength is, as it were, dissolved, flows away and is scattered in all directions.
HOMILETICS
Such fear should possess them upon the tidings of the Babylonish army’S approaching, as should make their rocky hearts melt as snow before the sun, or fat of lambs before the fire; and the hands, spirits, and knees of their stoutest man to be feeble, faint, and weak; so that they should be inept unto all services, especially military ones.
1. God will have the prophet to see what prophetical signs will do, when prophetical threats did nothing. “Sigh, son of man, with the breaking of thy loins,” &c. These were prophetical sighs, representing unto them the great evils which were coming upon them; that so they might consider, sigh in like manner for their sins, and prevent their destruction, or else certainly expect the same. God laid a heavy burden upon the prophet when he is called so to sigh.
2. Ill tidings sink the hearts and spirits of hypocrites and wicked ones. When they hear of wars and great forces coming against them, not only doth their mirth cease, but their hearts, hands, spirits, knees fail them. When Nebuchadnezzar came their hands were upon their loins, they knew not what to do, whither to go, where to hide themselves. But in Psalms 112:7, it is said of a godly man, “He shall not be afraid of evil tidings; his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.”—(Greenhill.)
GOD’S SWORD OF VENGEANCE AGAINST JERUSALEM
The parabolic character of Ezekiel 20:45-49 in the last chapter is continued. Then the destruction by fire was threatened; now it is the sword. Of this sword of vengeance against Israel for their sins we learn:—
I. It was lifted against those things in which the people trusted most. “Toward Jerusalem, the holy places, the land of Israel” (Ezekiel 21:2). The Jews turned their faces towards Jerusalem when they prayed in war, or in a foreign land. The sword of the Lord was to be drawn against all those glories of their country in which they most prided themselves. The candlestick will be removed from unfaithful churches.
II. It was manifestly the Sword of the Lord. “My sword” (Ezekiel 21:3). Human instruments were to be used, human passions; yet behind all these, and directing them, God was working out his own purposes. The swords were His, though men bare them. This will teach us to judge rightly of war, wherein the enmities of nations are so controlled by Providence that they are made to minister to the moral and intellectual welfare of the human race. God “maketh the wrath of man to praise Him,” and the “remainder” of that wrath, which might work but unmixed evil, He restrains from so futile a purpose. He can punish by whatever instrument He pleases. And because this judgment coming upon Jerusalem and the land of Israel is described as the sword of God, it follows that that judgment is a reality. The prophet is to drop his word of prophecy toward Jerusalem. That “word” was not a mere sound; but a sword, a real calamity. With God, words stand for things which have a real existence. The threatenings against sinners, however they may be disregarded in the present, will in the future have a terribly real meaning.
III. It was long threatened before it was drawn to smite. “And will draw forth My sword out of his sheath” (Ezekiel 21:3). It had lain in the sheath for 400 years, during all their wanderings and rebellions. The sheath in which God’s sword of vengeance lies unused is His forbearance.
IV. It still hangs over unrighteous nations. “It shall not return any more,” but “go forth against all flesh” (Ezekiel 21:4-5). This was the sword of the Chaldeans: it was followed by the sword of the Romans. And so the sword of God will rest not until the last Antichrist and his desolation. Israel fell beneath the stroke of God for her sins, and who then can escape? Whole nations have perished for lack of righteousness.
V. The thought of it should produce the greatest terror and alarm.
1. In the prophet who utters the threat of it. “Sigh therefore, thou son of man” (Ezekiel 21:6). The sigh is the momentary failure of the heart when suddenly overcome by the thought of sorrow. It answers to the tongue dumb with silence at the tidings of some overwhelming calamity. The prophet charged with the message is to sigh, as if completely overcome. Even God’s people may well tremble when they think of His judgments (Daniel 9:4, etc.). Christ wept over Jerusalem at the thought of her doom, and as if unwilling to abandon her to her enemies. It is with reluctance that the Almighty Judge pronounces sentence. Judgment is God’s “strange work.” The preacher who wishes to affect the feelings of others must feel himself. The thought of God’s sword of vengeance should produce the greatest terror and alarm,—
2. In the people to whom his message is delivered. If the prophet who simply announces the judgments is bidden to sigh, what must they do on whom the judgments are to fall! The prophet is to sigh for the tidings, “because it cometh.” He knows that they shall be fulfilled in grim reality. Therefore he announces that as concerning the people, “Every heart shall melt, and all hands shall be feeble, and every spirit shall faint, and all knees shall be weak as water” (Ezekiel 21:17). They refused to hear, now they shall be made to feel. Those who were so insolent in prosperity, and defied God, become, when His judgments fall upon them, faint-hearted and desolate. “Weak as water:” the strength of the most daring sinners melts away before the righteous anger of God.