EXEGETICAL NOTES.—(Ezekiel 21:18-22). The sword of the king of Babylon will smite Jerusalem, and then the Ammonites.
Ezekiel 21:19. “Appoint thee two ways, that the sword of the king of Babylon may come.” The force of this word, “appoint,” is to draw a symbolic sketch, to give an ocular demonstration. Ezekiel is to draw on a table or tablet a sketch of the siege of Jerusalem. The Hebrew word rendered “choose” in the latter part of the verse has the primary meaning of to cut, and points to the cutting or engraving of a representation. “Both twain shall come forth out of one land.” Or, the land of one, i.e., the land of the Babylonish king, from which both ways shall proceed. “Choose thou a place, choose it at the head of the way to the city.” “The ‘one land’ whence the two ways proceeded was that of Babylon, and the ways ran in a westerly direction; the more northerly by Riblah in Syria; and the more southerly by Tadmor, or Palmyra, in the desert. The former was that usually taken from Babylon to Jerusalem; the latter from the same city to Rabbah on the east of the Jordan. The prophet is directed to choose a place at the head of the way, or as it is literally, to cut a hand (Heb. yod, a hand or a sign), a sign pointing to the direction in which the Chaldean army was to proceed. This he was to place at the head or commencement of the way, where the two roads separated, each taking its own course; while we are necessarily to understand its being made to point towards that which the King of Babylon was to select, as we are taught in Ezekiel 21:21. Our authorised translators have adopted the secondary signification of the word to cut, by rendering it choose. That the hand is not supposed to have been formed by sculpture, would appear from the circumstance that, in case it had been so, a different Hebrew verb would have been employed. It may have been made of wood, just like our finger-posts, with the representation of a city cut in it. The word city is purposely indefinite, the Article being left to be supplied by the consciences of those whom the prophet addressed.”—Henderson.)
Ezekiel 21:20. “That the sword may come to Rabbah of the Ammonites.” “It may at first sight appear inappropriate that Rabbah, the metropolis of the country of the Ammonites, should be mentioned before Jerusalem, the guilty city against which the prophet was especially commissioned to denounce the Divine judgments; but, considering to what an extent the Jews had adopted the idols of the Ammonites, there was a singular propriety in first taking up the heathen city, to intimate that as the Jews had participated in its crimes so they might expect to share in its punishment. Rabbah of the children of Ammon, so called to distinguish it from a city of the same name in the tribe of Judah. It was built on the banks of the river Moret-Amman, which empties itself into the Jabbok.” (Henderson.) “Judah in Jerusalem the defenced.” The royal house of Judah was the special object of Nebuchadnezzar’s indignation. “The defenced”; same word as in Deuteronomy 28:52, “thy high and fenced walls, wherein thou trustedst.” It was Zedekiah’s trust in the strong fortifications of Jerusalem that led him to break faith with his sovereign. “Instead of simply expressing the name of Jerusalem, the other metropolis, that of the inhabitants is prefixed, to mark them as the guilty objects of the Divine indignation. The reason why Jerusalem is here said to be defenced would seem to be to intimate the vain confidence which the Jews reposed in their fortifications.” (Henderson.)
Ezekiel 21:21. “The King of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination; he made his arrows bright, he consulted with images, he looked in the liver.” “Nebuchadnezzar is supposed to have marched his army to a certain point to the west of Babylon, where the road branched off into the two referred to. The ‘parting’ (Heb. the mother of the way), so-called, not as generally supposed, because there the road divided, for that is immediately afterwards described as the head of the two ways, but because it was the principal road. Here the monarch is represented as having been at a loss to determine which of the routes he should take; and, in order to decide, as having recourse to divination. Of this as practised by the ancients there were different kinds, some of which are here mentioned. ‘Made his arrows bright;’ Heb. he shook the arrows—i.e., the helmet, quiver, or whatever else they were put into. It is most probable that he caused the name Jerusalem to be inscribed on one arrow, and Rabbah on another, and mixing them with others, determined to march against the city whose name was first drawn out. This mode of divining by arrows was practised by the Arabs till the time of Mohammed, who strictly prohibited it in the Koran. Another species of divination to which the King of Babylon had recourse, was that of looking into the liver or the entrails of a newly-killed sacrifice, and judging that any undertaking would be prosperous or otherwise according as they were found in a healthy or unhealthy state. This art is mentioned by Diodorus as practised among the Chaldeans. Not satisfied with the use of these two species of divination, Nebuchadnezzar consulted the Teraphim, which appear to have been penates or family gods, from whom it was thought possible to obtain information relative to future events (Genesis 31:19; Genesis 31:34; Judges 17:5; Judges 18:14).”—(Henderson.)
Ezekiel 21:22. “At his right hand was the divination for Jerusalem.” The king with his right hand draws out the arrow on which was marked the name Jerusalem. The omen decides for him, and he is represented as holding up the arrow to encourage his army in their march against Jerusalem.“To open the mouth in the slaughter.” “This expression cannot well be taken in its usual signification of murder, but must be understood, as Gesenius explains, as an outbreak of the voice; both terms thus energetically expressing the horrible war-shout of the Chaldean soldiers when commencing the attack.”—(Henderson.) “The slaughter-cry of the besiegers is called slaughter, because the slaughter is virtually contained in it.”—(Hengstenberg).