In the five and twentieth year of our captivity, in the beginning of the year, in the tenth [day] of the month, in the fourteenth year after that the city was smitten, in the selfsame day the hand of the LORD was upon me, and brought me thither.
Ver. 1. In the five and twentieth year; &c.] After the defeat of Gog and Magog cometh, in these last nine Chapter s, a new prophecy, aptly depending upon the former, concerning the Christian Church, and the spiritual state and constitution thereof; which is here prefigured by types of rebuilding the temple, restoring the Levitical rites, and repossessing the promised land. To those Jews who here hence expect a most glorious temple and state at the coming of their imaginary Messiah, and for whose sakes these high things are thus expressed, Christ may well say, as afterwards he did to Nicodemus, Joh 3:12 "If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I telI you of heavenly?" The wiser of their Rabbis, a as Galatinus testifieth, convinced by good reasons, understand these Chapter s not of an earthly building according to the letter, but of a heavenly, and in a mystical sense. And John the divine so interpreteth this scripture Revelation 21:1,11 ; Revelation 21:22,27 ; Rev 22:7 - viz., of the heavenly Jerusalem, that mother of us all. It is ordinary with the prophets to speak figuratively of the amplitude, splendour, and magnificence of the Christian Church; as Isaiah 54:11,12, "I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundation with sapphires," &c. - that is, I will erect and raise my Church and temple among the Gentiles, and adorn and deck it with lustre and variety of precious graces. Divines observe, that God here showeth Ezekiel a new temple larger than the old Jerusalem, and a new Jerusalem larger than all the land of Canaan; yea, according to the account of some learned Rabbis, larger than all the world; for Eze 48:35 it was round about eighteen thousand measures - i.e., leucas, say they. Now in opening of this prophecy, it must not be expected that something should be said to every verse, as elsewhere hath been done; and yet we must know that there is nothing in Holy Scripture that is not useful and profitable, 2Ti 3:16 though at first sight it may seem otherwise. Metals lie hidden in hardest quarries; wholesome herbs are found often in the roughest places, and precious stones in barren sands. Hippocrates saith that in the faculty of medicine there is nothing small, nothing contemptible. b Aristotle saith in all nature nothing is so mean, vile, and abject that deserveth not to be admired. The Rabbis have a saying that there is a mountain of sense which hangeth upon every apex of the Word of God, &c.
And brought me thither,] scil., To Jerusalem, in vision, that valley of vision. In the beginning of this book, the Spirit carried him into the plain of Shinar, there to see a vision purporting the destruction of the material temple. Here, toward the close of it, he is by the same hand carried to Jerusalem to see a mystical temple, set up in the stead thereof, far more stately. "The sufferings of this life are in no comparison worthy of the glory that shall be revealed." Rom 8:18
a R. Abba, R. Solomon. - Gal., lib. v. cap. 12.
b ουδεν μικρον ουδεν καταφρονητεον. - De Part. Anim., lib. i. cap. 5.