EXEGETICAL NOTES.— Ezekiel 21:23-27. Though this announcement of God’s judgments will appear to the people of Judea as a deceptive divination, yet it will surely come to pass. The prophet, however, sees beyond all these evils the hope of redemption. The Messiah is promised, who is to be the founder and restorer of perfect right on earth (Ezekiel 21:27). See also, Psalms 62; Isaiah 9:6; Isaiah 42:1; Jeremiah 23:5; Jeremiah 33:17.
Ezekiel 21:23 “And it shall be unto them as a false divination in their sight, to them that have sworn oaths, but He will call to remembrance the iniquity, that they may be taken.” “Though the Jews were prone themselves to believe in divination, yet they affect to despise it when it tells against them. The second ‘to them’ may be understood to refer to the Jews, as they had come under solemn engagements to be subject to the Babylonians, but those engagements they had violated; and for this, as well as their other sins, they were now to be punished. The oaths were those the Jews had taken to the King of Babylon. ‘He will call to remembrance,’ refers to Nebuchadnezzar, to whom the Jews had proved faithless, and who now should recall to their mind the crime of perjury, of which they had been guilty.”—(Henderson).
Ezekiel 21:24. “So that in all your doings your sins do appear.” They dragged their old sins into light again by the new enormities which they committed. Their rebellion against God is here spoken of as “your iniquity,” “transgressions,” “sins.” These words are the same as those mentioned in connection with the offerings on the day of Atonement, when “a remembrance was made of sins” (Leviticus 16; Hebrews 10:3). Then the people confessed their sins and were forgiven; but now they refuse to acknowledge their guilt (Ezekiel 18:2), and so their sin is “discovered,” it stands over for punishment.
Ezekiel 21:25. “And thou, profane wicked prince of Israel.” Zedekiah is pointed out by name as the prince whose wickedness had desecrated his character as the Lord’s anointed. “When iniquity shall have an end.” Heb., In the time of final iniquity. Their iniquity was now full, when justice can no longer stay her hand (Genesis 15:16). It was the treachery of Zedekiah towards Nebuchadnezzar that brought their national affairs to the crisis, to the time of judgment. In the person of that wicked prince the temporal sovereignty of David’s house received a wound from which it never recovered. He brought complete destruction upon the Jewish state.
Ezekiel 21:26.“Remove the diadem.” More accurately, “the mitre.” Besides this passage, the word is found only in Exodus 28:29, Exodus 28:39; Leviticus 8:16; and it is always used of the High Priest’s mitre. “The crown” The regal crown. This word occurs in the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, but only in the history of David’s conquest of Rabbah (2 Samuel 12:30); 1 Chronicles 20:2).“Ideally regarded, the king bears, as the representative of the whole people, along with the crown, the head band, or priestly cap. The two are closely connected. The crown without the band is an empty show. The forgiveness of sins, which was secured by the mediation of the high priest, whose dignity was overthrown with the fall of the sanctuary forms the foundation of all the royal blessings of God. In the Messiah, in whom the kingdom attained to its full reality, a real union of the kingly and priestly offices is to take place (Zechariah 6), which were practically divided under the Old Testament on account of human weakness.”—(Hengstenberg). “This shall not be the same.” (Heb.) This is not this. The meaning is that there shall be a complete revolution in the existing state of things. By a sad reversal, the hallowed nation is unholy; the mitre which had written on it, “Holiness to the Lord,” is profaned, the regal crown disgraced by such wickedness is laid in the dust. All things, hitherto sacred, have now become unreal, and must be swept away by “a righteous judgment.” Exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high.” “In a general overthrow the low is exalted even by the fact that it becomes like the high, who are involved in the same downfall. The people have in their procedure turned the lowest into the highest, and in just retribution the same takes place in their experience. All is levelled.”—(Hengstenberg).“This is not to be taken as the enunciation of a general truth, but it is to be understood specifically of the Messiah and of Zedekiah. There is a direct reference to the Messiah in the following verse. The two are here placed in the strongest contrast:—the root out of the dry ground (Isaiah 53:2), whom the prophet sees in the future, and the haughty monarch immediately present to his view upon the royal Jewish throne. The commands given in this verse are a strong mode of declaring prophetically that the things should be done.”—(Henderson).
Ezekiel 21:27. “I will overturn, overturn, overturn it” (Heb.) An overthrow, overthrow, overthrow, will I make it. The threefold repetition is intensive, conveying the idea that there shall be overthrow upon overthrow. “And it shall be no more.” The words can be rendered, even this is no more. The kingdom, though constituted by God Himself, should perish, as though it had never been. “Until He come, whose right it is; and I will give it Him.” There is an evident reference here to Genesis 49:10. Judah’s royalty is taken away, but not for ever. His inherent dignity persists through all the wreck of his fortunes and hopes, until it is assumed by the Messiah, who has both the right and the power to rule. The outward royalty and priesthood must pass away, but the true King of Israel is coming, who is also a “Priest upon His throne.” (Zechariah 6:13; Acts 3:14; Hebrews 7:26; Zechariah 9:9). “Nowhere is there rest, nowhere security, all things are in a state of flux, till the coming of the Great Restorer and Prince of Peace. He to whom this right belongs, and to whom God will give it, is the Messiah, of whom the prophets from the times of David onwards have prophesied as the founder and restorer of purest right on earth (Psalms 72; Isaiah 9:6; Isaiah 42:1; Jeremiah 23:5; Jeremiah 33:17).”—(Keil). “It is not expressly said what was to be given Him, and should stand waiting for its proper possessor till He should come; but the context forbids us to understand anything less than what was taken away—the things represented by the priestly mitre and the royal crown. The true priestly dignity, and the proper regal glory, were to be gone for a time into abeyance; some partial, temporary and fluctuating possession of them might be regained, but nothing more; the adequate and permanent realization was only to be found in the person of Messiah, because in Him alone was there to be a fitting representation of the Divine righteousness. It is true that there was something like a restoration of the standing and honour of the presthood after the return from the Babylonian exile; and if the ideas currently entertained upon the subject were correct, there might appear in that a failure of the prophecy. But there was no right restoration of the priestly, any more than of the regal dignity at the time specified; it was but a shadow of the original glory. For there was no longer the distinctive prerogative of the Urim and Thummim, nor the ark of the covenant, nor the glory over-shadowing the mercy-seat; all was in a depressed and mutilated condition, and even that subject to many interferences from the encroachments of foreign powers. So much only was given, both in respect to the priesthood and the kingdom, as to show that the Lord had not forsaken His people, and to serve as a pledge of the coming glory. But it was to the still prospective, rather than the present state of things, that the eye of faith was still directed to look for the proper restoration. And lest any should expect otherwise, the prophet Zechariah, after the return from Babylon, took up the matter, as it were, where Ezekiel had left it, and intimated in the plainest manner, that what was then accomplished was scarcely worth taking into account; it was, at the most, but doing in a figure what could only find its real accomplishment in the person and work of Messiah (Zechariah 6:14). Thus the mitre and the crown were both to meet in Him, and the temple in its noblest verse be built and the glory be obtained, such as became the Lord’s Anointed to possess. Meanwhile, all was but preparatory and imperfect.”—(Fairbairn).
HOMILETICS
The word “overturn” is trebled, to show not only the certainty and evidence of the thing but the gradation and continuance of it; for the kingdom of Judah by certain degrees fell from its height. After that Zedekiah was deposed, there was no crown nor king more in Judah. After the captivity there were no kings, but governors, captains, rulers; after them the high priests had the power, in whose hands it continued, even to Hyrcanus, who usurping kingly authority was miserably stain—Herod, a stranger, succeeding. “Until He come whose right it is.” The crown shall neither fit, nor be fastened to any head, till He come that hath the right to it; and that is neither Nebuchadnezzar nor Zerubbabel; nor Aristobulus, Alexander, or Hyrcanus, who assumed kingly dignity to themselves, in time of the Maccabees; but Christ the Messiah, who is the true Heir and Successor of David, when He comes, shall raise up the kingdom of Judah, being miserably afflicted, destitute, and lost to the eye of the world; He changing it into a spiritual kingdom, shall restore it to a higher glory than ever it had. The crown here was reserved and laid up for the Lord Christ, who was born King of the Jews (Matthew 2:2); to whom the angel told Mary that the Lord should give the throne of His father David, and that He should reign over the house of Jacob for ever (Luke 1:32-33). Nathaniel called Him “the King of Israel” (John 1:40). The Father hath appointed Christ to be king of Israel, gave Him power (Isaiah 9:6; Micah 5:2). Christ claimed to be such Himself (John 5:22). “And I will give it Him.” Christ, when He comes, shall not be kept off from His rights. Though He come in a mean and low way, yet He shall be king and reign.
I. The Lord doth lay the glory of crowns and sceptres in the dust when He pleases. “I will overturn.” There is no crown so sure to any mortal’s head, no kingdom so stable, but the Lord can pluck away the crown, shake the kingdom to pieces, throw out the possessors, and dispossess their heirs. Sometimes the Lord doth suddenly overturn empires and kingdoms (Daniel 5:30-31); sometimes He proceeds gradually as with the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. “I will be unto Ephraim as a moth, and to the house of Judah as rottenness. A moth eats up a garment by degrees, now it makes one hole in it, and anon another; so rottenness enters by degrees into a tree, first into one branch, then another, after into the body and root. So God, by degrees, wasted and consumed these kingdoms. Be it suddenly or gradually, He overturns them when He pleases. He breaks the slaves of the wicked, and the sceptres of the rulers (Isaiah 14:5).
II. When God overturns crowns and kingdoms He keeps those in such a condition while he pleases. “And it shall be no more, until He come, whose right it is.” This was near 500 years; for from Zedekiah’s deposal to the birth of Christ were 492 years, which was a long season for His crown and kingdom to lie in darkness, and a desolate condition. Hosea told us long since that the children of Israel should “abide many days without a king and without a prince” (Hosea 3:4). The kingdom of Israel was overturned by the hand of God above a hundred years before the kingdom of Judah, and lies overturned to this day; and so hath been above two thousand years in a sad, dark, distressed condition. Their sins were great, which caused the Lord to overturn them, and He lets them lie under the punishment of their iniquity many years. When kingdoms are down, many may strive to lift them up to their former dignity, but it cannot be till the Lord’s time come.
III. The Lord Christ; the promised Messiah, was the true King of Judah, and Prince of Zion. “Until He comes whose right it is, and I will give it Him.” The Father had appointed Him to be King, given Him the kingdom, and made it known long before His coming in the flesh. He was the Shiloh, the Prosperer, unto whom the gathering of the people should be; He gathered Jews and Gentiles together. He was spoken of as the “Star of Jacob,” and the “Sceptre” who “should rise out of Israel” (Numbers 24:17). In many other places of Scripture, the kingdom of Christ, His right thereunto, and the Father’s donation thereof unto Him are spoken of. The people’s hearts were towards Him, and they would have made Him a king (John 6:15). However He appeared to the world, the Apostles beheld glory and majesty in Him (John 1:14; 2 Peter 1:16); and Pilate wrote over His head, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews” (Matthew 27:37). Christ was born a king, died a king, He lives and reigns at this day King of Zion, and of all saints (Revelation 15:3).
IV. The wisdom and goodness of the Lord towards His people, that when He tells them of the severest judgment, He mingles some mercy. Though He threatens their Church and State for a long time, yet He tells them of the coming of Christ who should be their king, wear the crown, and raise up the kingdom again. This was a great mercy, in the depth of misery; if they lost an earthly kingdom, they should have a spiritual one; if they lost a profane and temporal king, they should have a king of righteousness, an eternal king. It is the method of the Lord, when He is bringing in dreadful judgments upon His people, that have provoked Him bitterly, to lay in something that may support and comfort those who have served Him faithfully (Amos 9:8-11). Here is goodness with severity.
V. That how contrary soever God’s actings appear, yet He will make good His promises. The Lord had promised to set up His son Christ to be King in Zion, the hill of His holiness (Psalms 2:6); that the Government should be upon His shoulder (Isaiah 9:6); that He would “cause a Branch of righteousness to grow up unto David, and He shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land (Jeremiah 33:15). What likelihood was there that these things should be, when the Lord overturns the land, plucks up all by the roots, and lays all in a dead condition, and that for many days and years? They might have thought and said, Surely, this death of the crown, of Church and State, will be the death of all those and other promises; but it was not so. Though a sentence of death was upon the land, upon the Jews, yet the living God kept life in the promises, He remembered them, and said, I will give it to Him, He shall have this land, the kingdom and the crown, He shall sit upon Zion, reign and execute judgment. The actings of God sometimes are such, that to man’s apprehensions they will make void the promises of God. In Psalms 77:7-8; saith Asaph, “Will the Lord cast off for ever? And will He be favourable no more? Is His mercy clean gone for ever? Doth His promise fail for evermore? God’s hand was heavy upon him, his soul was greatly afflicted so that he questioned the truth of God’s promises, and was ready to despair. But what saith he in the tenth verse, “This was my infirmity.” There was no infirmity in God; He had not forgotten His promise, it was not out of His sight, though out of Asaph’s. Man’s faith may fail him sometimes, but God’s faithfulness never fails Him (Psalms 89:33). God’s operations may have an aspect that way; the devil’s temptations and our unbelieving hearts may not only make us think so, but persuade us it is so; whereas it cannot be so, for the Lord will not suffer it, He will not make a lie in His truth or faithfulness; so the Hebrew is: He is Truth, and not one of His promises can fail. This must afford strong consolation unto all that are under any promise of God.—Greenhill.
JERUSALEM’S FALL AND RISING
The prophet announces the fall of the temporal sovereignty of David’s house in the person of Zedekiah. He declares his message as the word of the Lord, “Exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high” (Ezekiel 21:26). This may be considered as the principle upon which God acts in His government of mankind throughout all ages. When the mother of our Lord thought of the honour which had been bestowed upon her, that one so obscure and lowly should be chosen to bring forth the Saviour of the world, she broke forth into a song of praise, saying, “He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree” (Luke 1:52). Christ taught the general principle, “Everyone that exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” (Luke 17:14). Even the great French sceptic, Bayle, says of these words, that they contain “the abridgment of all human history.” Such is the law of God’s kingdom. Jerusalem is to fall, but in due time to be raised to a better and nobler condition. Her true King will come unto her in the person of the Messiah. Her fall is to be unto rising (Ezekiel 21:27).
I. Jerusalem’s fall.
1. It is portrayed by an enigmatic representation. The event is now near and the prophet is bidden to portray the judgments which are to fall upon Jerusalem. He draws a symbolic sketch of the siege of the city, representing the advance of Nebuchadnezzar towards it from his own country. The King of Babylon is seen standing on the highway, at a point from which two roads diverge, one leading to Jerusalem, the other to Rabbah. Which road shall he take? He determines his course by augury in three of its branches, employing divination by arrows, by images, and by the appearance of the entrails of a newly killed sacrifice. The omens all point to Jerusalem as the first object of attack. Thus Providence so ordered it that judgment must begin at the house of God.
2. The threat of it is received with irreverent credulity. When the Jews hear that the King of Babylon is advancing against Jerusalem they make light of it. They say that the king has been misled by a false divination (Ezekiel 21:23). They forget that they themselves were deluded by vain divinations and lying prophets (Ezekiel 21:29; Exodus 13:6-7; Exodus 22:28). They despise augury when it is against themselves. In their infatuation they cannot read the signs of the times, nor see that their judgment is nigh at hand. They readily take refuge in any interpretation of events which can lend some support to their vain hope. They are blind to the sad facts of their own spiritual condition, which must inevitably draw these judgments upon them. They have the worst omens against them, their iniquities, transgressions, sins (Ezekiel 21:24); and, more particularly, their treason and perjury (Ezekiel 21:23). And all this was “discovered” sin, it affected the social and political life of the nation; it appeared before the eyes of all men (Ezekiel 21:24).
3. The instrument which was to bring it about was chosen of God. The human instrument who was to compass the fall of Jerusalem was the King of Babylon, who, in this instance, was God’s servant for judgment. Though an heathen king, and one who consulted augury, he was truly an instrument in the hands of God for the correction of His people and for working out His purposes towards mankind. God can guide even men’s appeals to chance, and overrule them for His own purpose (Proverbs 16:33). The Magi, who were worshippers of the hosts of heaven, and who thought that they could read in them the destinies of nations, were yet led to Christ by a star. Apart from all his consultation of omens, the King of Babylon had justice on his side. He was truly a chosen vessel to accomplish God’s righteous will concerning Jerusalem.
4. The blame must be charged upon the Jews themselves. “Because ye have made your iniquity to be remembered” (Ezekiel 21:24). The King of Babylon must not be charged with their disasters, nor his resorting to divination, but to their own treason and perjury they must impute the blame. It was not their father’s sins but their own that brought destruction upon them.
5. Judgment was inevitable. “Jerusalem the defenced” (Ezekiel 21:20) must fall. The measure of her iniquity was full. Justice could forbear no longer. In Zedekiah the iniquity of the nation culminated. (Ezekiel 21:25). In him the sovereignty of David’s house came to an end.
II. Jerusalem’s rising. In one man Jerusalem fell, but a greater Man shall restore it. The sovereignty of David’s house came to an end in Zedekiah, but not for ever. Jerusalem has a future. She shall rise from her ruins in a far more glorious form than that in which she was lost, even as the “Jerusalem which is above, the mother of us all” (Galatians 4:26).
1. The rising is to come through the Messiah. It is not by a doctrine, or a truth, but by a person that God will deliver His people. Zedekiah represented the nation in its fall; Christ in its rising. The Messiah is the rightful sovereign of men (Ezekiel 21:27). He is the true priest, and the true king. All others are but shadows of Him. He alone has the supreme right and power. Among the Israelites the offices of priest and king were jealously separated; but in Christ they can be united with perfect safety, for He is both holy and just.
2. The deliverance through the Messiah only comes after the complete wreck of the nation’s fortunes. “I will overturn, overturn, overturn it; and it shall be no more” (Ezekiel 21:24). This complete destruction issued in that fulness of time in which the Son of Man should come. The Messiah appeared upon the wreck of the world’s hopes. Judah’s royalty had long been laid in the dust, Greece had long ago fallen, and Rome was fast sinking into decay, when God sent His Son to redeem the world. Men were permitted to make the sad experiment of trying to live without God, in order that they might learn their need of a Redeemer who was the “Desire of all nations.”