Ezekiel 4:1-17

CHAPTER 4.

THE VISION OF THE SIEGE AND THE INIQUITY-BEARING.

Ezekiel 4:1. And thou, son of man, take thee a brick, and set it before thee, and engrave on it the city Jerusalem.

Ezekiel 4:2. And lay siege against it, and build a watch-tower (The sense of fort, which, in the received translation, as in most earlier versions and commentators, was ascribed here to דָּיֵק, is now generally abandoned, and it is most commonly taken in the sense of watch-tower, such as besiegers were wont to erect in front of a city, for the purpose of descrying the motions of the besieged. So it is taken by the Syriac, and though the Septuagint has here περίτειχος; yet, in Ezekiel 26:8, it uses προφυλακή for the same word. So, too, Gesenius, in his Thes., and latterly in Lex., also H ävernick, Henderson (on Jer. 56:4), and Maurer. The last, however, hesitates between this sense, according to which the word is derived from דּוּק to look out, speculari, still found in the Aramaic, and that of a battering machine, from דָּקַק Heb.) against it, and cast a mound against it, and order a camp against it, and set against it battering-rams round about. (Instead of battering-rams, Hävernick would render כָּרִים through-borers, or through-breakers, on the ground that כָּר does not signify rain, but lamb, and in particular a fat lamb. He would, therefore, take it as a noun from כְָרָה, dig or bore through. The thing indicated, however, is still much the same; and, allowing the derivation, which cannot be regarded as certain, there seems no need for altering the transl ation, which gives the usual term for the old warlike instrument referred to. The Targum gives the same sense, and Kimchi explains, “iron rams to batter down the walls.” The LXX., however, render by the more general term βελοστάσεις, engines for throwing s ome sort of missiles.)

Ezekiel 4:3. And do thou take thee an iron pan and set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city, and direct thy face against it, and it shall be besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it. It is a sign to the house of Israel.

Ezekiel 4:4. And thou shalt lie upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it; according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon it, thou shalt bear their iniquity.

Ezekiel 4:5. And I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days three hundred and ninety days; and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.

Ezekiel 4:6. And when thou hast accomplished these, thou shalt lie again upon thy right side, and shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days; a day for a year, a day for a year, (The expression, “a day for a year,” is twice used, as in Numbers 14:34, instead of a day for every year, in order to render the reference to the pas sage in Numbers more manifest.) have I appointed it to thee.

Ezekiel 4:7. And thou shalt set thy face toward the siege of Jerusalem, and thine arm uncovered; and thou shalt prophesy against it.

Ezekiel 4:8. And behold I lay upon thee bands, that thou mayest not turn from one side to another, till thou hast accomplished the days of thy besieging.

Ezekiel 4:9. And do thou take to thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, and put them into one vessel, and make thee bread of them; according to the number of the days that thou liest upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof.

Ezekiel 4:10. And thy food which thou shalt eat is by weight, twenty shekels a day; from time to time shalt thou eat it.

Ezekiel 4:11. And water by measure shalt thou drink, the sixth part of an hin; from time to time shalt thou drink it. (The allowance of provisions specified would form, if reduced to English measure, about a pound weight of bread per day, and from a pint and a half to two pints of water barely enough to support life.)

Ezekiel 4:12. And barley-cakes (i.e. after the manner of these) shalt thou eat it; and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight.

Ezekiel 4:13. And Jehovah said to me, Thus shall the children of Israel eat their denied bread among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them.

Ezekiel 4:14. And I said, Ah, Lord Jehovah, behold, my soul has not been polluted, and neither of carcase nor of what is torn in pieces have I eaten from my youth even until now; nor has abominable flesh come into my mouth.

Ezekiel 4:15. And he said to me, See I have given thee cow's dung instead of human ordure, and thou shalt make thy bread of it.

Ezekiel 4:16. And he said to me, Son of man, behold I break the staff of bread in Jerusalem, and they shall eat bread by weight, and with care; and they shall drink water by measure, and in desolateness;

Ezekiel 4:17. That they may want bread and water, and be desolate one toward another, and pine away in their iniquities.

THE prophet is here commanded to take a tile or brick, and engrave on it an outline of the city of Jerusalem. Having done this, he is instructed to direct against the city the usual means and appliances of a siege, to build a tower of observation, to cast up a mound against it, to prepare battering-rams, or instruments for effecting breaches in the walls; and with an iron frying-pan, set up between him and the city, and as with a Avail of metal separating him from it, to carry on a close and vigorous siege. At the same time, and while this action was proceeding (see Ezekiel 4:7-8), the prophet is enjoined to lie first on his left side for 390 days, bearing for so long a time the iniquity of the house of Israel; then turn to the other side, and for 40 days more to bear the iniquity of the house of Judah. These days of iniquity-bearing, he is also given to understand, represent so many years, during which the people whom he personified were destined to bear their iniquity. Nor was there to be any release from the appointed doom; for in token of the Divine determination to execute what was decreed, bands were to be laid upon him, to hold him in his place till the whole was accomplished. Still further, he is directed to take different kinds of grain, from the richest to the poorest (wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet, spelt or dhourra, the three last being the poorer kinds of grain), and mix them all together for bread, as if no choice was to be exercised about the quality, but the worst as well as the best had to be turned to account. He was also to bake them with the foulest and most offensive ingredients; and eat what was baked in scanty portions, with an accompanying pittance of water, as is usual in times of straitness and scarcity. This he was to do for the period of “390 days, the days he was to lie upon his side;” for thus, it is added by way of explanation,” even thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them.” And after having complained of the defilement necessarily connected with the order (“Ah! Lord God, behold, my soul hath not been polluted!”), and having obtained a slight modification of the order, though the bread was still to be scant and abominable, the Divine communication was thus briefly and mournfully wound up: “And. he said to me, Son of man, behold I break the staff of bread in Jerusalem; and they shall eat bread by weight, and with care; and they shall drink water by measure, and in desolateness; that they may want bread and water, and be desolate one toward another, and pine away in their iniquities.”

In this singular communication there is fortunately no difficulty worth naming as regards the meaning of the words or the construction of the sentences. And in regard to the part required to be played by the prophet himself, however it may have been understood in former times, we should suppose few now will be disposed to doubt that the successive actions spoken of took place only in vision, and are no more to be ranked among the occurrences of actual life than the eating of the prophetic roll mentioned in the preceding chapter. Indeed, such actions as are described here, though well fitted when rehearsed as past, and read as narratives of things ideally done, to make a strong and vivid impression upon the mind, would plainly have had an opposite effect if transacted in real life. It would have been impossible for ordinary spectators to see Ezekiel conducting a miniature siege with a tile and a sauce-pan, and such like implements of war, without a feeling of the puerile and ludicrous being awakened; and the other symbolical actions mentioned, especially his lying for 390 days motionless on one side, if literally understood, can scarcely be regarded as coming within the limits of the possible. And along with the physical impossibility of one part of the requirement, there was the moral impossibility of another; since to eat bread composed of such abominable materials would have been (if performed in real life) a direct contravention of the law of Moses, that law, respectful submission to which was ever held to be the first and most essential characteristic of a true prophet (compare Deuteronomy 14:3; Deuteronomy 23:12-14, with Deuteronomy 13:1-5). Besides, we find the prophet (Ezekiel 8:1) represented as sitting in his house before the number of the days to be spent in a lying posture could have been completed. (Dr. Pradus and others have sought to lengthen out the time between the two periods given at the beginning of this and the eighth chap., by resorting to the fiction of an intercalary month. But shifts of this kind, to say the least, are always unsatisfactory, and the defective time, taken along with the other considerations mentioned, are quite conclusive against a literal understanding of the vision.) So that, on every account, it is necessary to consider the actions to have taken place in vision, as indeed was usually the case in prophetical actions, and uniformly so, as we shall find, in Ezekiel.

But if there is little room for diversity of opinion as to the visionary nature of the scene described in this chapter, or to the import of the terms employed, when we look to the message itself contained in the vision, there is something so peculiar and enigmatical in its structure, that it would be difficult to point to a single chapter in the whole prophetical scriptures where our commentators have found themselves so entirely at sea, and so unable to satisfy either themselves or their readers. It is of great importance, however, to find the right clue here, as a good deal depends on it for a correct understanding of the peculiar manner of our prophet generally, and for the satisfactory explanation of the more obscure portions of his writings. Nor is there any insurmountable difficulty in the way, if only we view the different parts of the vision in their due connection one with another, and give to the language of the prophet its fair and legitimate import.

1. Let it first be noted, then, for a right interpretation of the vision, that the several parts form but one great whole. What is first symbolized by the prophet's laying siege to Jerusalem is not to be regarded as something diverse and apart from what is afterwards indicated by his lying so many days upon his side, and eating scant and abominable bread; for the two actions are distinctly represented as contemporaneous. It is while in the act of lying upon his side that he is to set his face toward Jerusalem, and to stretch out toward it his uncovered arm, as a sign of the Lord's displeasure manifested against it (Ezekiel 4:7-8). Nor is he allowed to change his posture “till the days of the siege are ended.” So that the second line of action must have been designed to be supplementary to the first, and was merely added to bring out more fully and distinctly the instruction sought to be conveyed. But such being the case, the action of the siege, which forms the first part of the vision, cannot have been intended to depict the calamity of an actual siege of Jerusalem; for then, by the other and contemporaneous actions, it must needs have been protracted for centuries, and must also have been a calamity in which the house of Israel shared as well as the house of Judah. We must, therefore, dismiss from our minds the thought of an actual siege (which has so commonly embarrassed the views of interpreters), excepting in so far as that may have formed a constituent part of the contemplated troubles. Jerusalem, the common mother, the centre of the whole covenant- people, appearing as a besieged city, assailed with all the means and implements of war, and these plied by the immediate direction and agency of the living God, this stands here as an image of the people themselves lying under the ban of Heaven, given up as a prey to the powers of evil, and doomed to experience at their hands the most severe and painful indignities. Hence, also, as the siege itself was comprehensive of the whole that was to be experienced, we are told merely of its continued pressure, but not of its result; for, in the present case, nothing really depended on that, and the mention of it might even have tended to convey a false impression, by leading us to fix our minds simply on a literal siege and overthrow of Jerusalem.

2. It must be noted again, in regard to the second action in the vision, that by the bearing of the people's iniquity must be understood the punishment due to their sins. If the expression had been in itself a doubtful one, the instruction we have seen to be imparted by the action of the siege would have obliged us to take it in the sense now mentioned. But the expression is -one that very frequently occurs in Scripture, and always in the sense of sustaining the punishment due to sin. We point only to a few examples out of many which might be given: Numbers 14:33; Leviticus 19:8; Isaiah 53:12; and in Ezekiel himself, chap, Ezekiel 18:19-20; Ezekiel 23:35. (It is scarcely worthwhile, perhaps, to refer to a recent small publication of Mr. Galloway on this chapter, in which he admits the expression “sometimes ha& the force of bearing the punishment of iniquity.” We affirm it always has so in the passages which are at all parallel to the one before us. For to bring in here, as Mr. G. does, the idea of bearing in the sense of atoning is entirely out of place, since there is nothing here of expiation by sacrifice, the only valid means of atonement; and to bear or atone by doing penance, which would with his views be the sense really imposed on the passage, is utterly foreign to our prophet, and to Scripture generally.) The corresponding years, therefore, on the part of the people, represented by the days of iniquity-bearing in the prophet, must be years of trouble and affliction, years not of committing sin, but of receiving chastisement for sin already committed, years during which the Divine judgment, rather than the Divine mercy and forbearance, came into exercise. The same also appears still further from the kind of treatment they were to receive during the period in question, which has its most prominent representation in the destination to eat defiled bread, and that only in small portions, among the Gentiles. What could more impressively denote a people bearing a load of unpardoned guilt, and groaning under the rebuke and chastisement of Heaven? It implies that Israel's peculiar distinction, as compared with others., was to be virtually abolished, and that as they had degraded themselves spiritually to a level with the heathen, so the Lord would make their condition outwardly to correspond, by subjecting them to a base and dishonourable treatment before the world. This is said with respect more immediately to the house of Israel; but of entirely similar import is the other and less prominent part of the representation, which points more directly to the house of Judah: that they should “eat bread by weight and with care; and drink water by measure and in desolateness, and consume away in their iniquities.” In respect to both departments alike of the covenant-people, it is manifestly the infliction of a penalty that is meant by the evil suffered the just desert of sin.

3. These things being premised and explained, we come now to what may be called the grand difficulty of the scene, the time during which the iniquity-bearing was to proceed with its humiliating and afflicting treatment: 390 years for the house of Israel, and 40 for the house of Judah. It is clear from the remarks already made, that the period mentioned can have no respect to the time that may have actually been consumed at the last siege of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans. For it is not a literal siege at all which the vision properly contemplates; and if it could be proved (which it never can with certainty) that the time actually spent by the Chaldeans in besieging Jerusalem precisely corresponded with the number of days during which the prophet was to lie on his two sides, what should thereby be gained? These days have no independent worth in themselves; they merely represented the number of years during which the people were to be dealt with for their sins. Neither can the periods mentioned bear respect to the times during which the houses of Israel and Judah respectively pursued their course of rebellion, provoking, but still not properly experiencing, the execution of Heaven's judgments: as if it might be enough to verify the prophetic delineation, could 390 years be ascertained of open defection for the house of Israel, and 40 for the house of Judah, before the destruction of Jerusalem. It was palpably the reverse, at least in the case of Judah; for the vigorous reformation of Josiah took place within these last forty years, and the history of the period does not present such a continued prosecution of rebellious courses as the supposition would require. But besides this evident failure in respect to the one house, such a line of inquiry leads entirely in the wrong direction for both houses, as it refers to the time of iniquity being committed, not of iniquity being borne, to the contracting of the guilt, not to the enforcing of the penalty. Calculations, therefore, of the kind just referred to tend only to mislead; and we must look elsewhere altogether for the proper clue to this part of the vision. (It is by the neglect of the considerations adduced above that the false interpretations of the vision which unfortunately comprehend all that have been current in this country have gone so much astray. They all lose themselves in unsatisfactory and needless attempts to show, partly how the number of days assigned to the prophet for lying on his side coincided with the time consumed in the siege of Jerusalem, and partly how the 390 years for the house of Israel, and the 40 for the house of Judah, corresponded with the respective periods of transgression, clown to the taking of Jerusalem. The Duke of Manchester, in his Times of Daniel, p. 20, etc., has recently produced some calculations of his own on the subject, and dates the 390 years from the first public defalcation of Rehoboam, a little before the revolt of the ten tribes, the usual starting-point, in order to make the time square more exactly with the 390 of the prophet; and the 40 years he transfers altogether to another age, to the period between John the Baptist's public appearance and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. It is needless to go into such calculations and conjectures, as they proceed on an entire misconception of the subject, and refer the prophetic periods to times of God's forbearance with iniquity, instead of times of direct and formal chastisement for its guilt.)

The 390 years for the house of Israel and 40 for the house of Judah, it will be observed, make up together 430 years, a period famous in the earlier history of the covenant-people, being the term of their sojourn in the land of Egypt (Exodus 12:40-41). The thought of a reference to this could scarcely escape the notice of a Hebrew scholar or careful student of the prophet; and accordingly we learn from Jerome, in his notes on the passage, that the Jews of his time understood the prophet to intimate that, “as the children of Israel had been 430 years in Egypt, so in the same number would their final captivity be completed.” The commencement of this final captivity, he further tells us, they dated from the second year of Vespasian, when Jerusalem was taken by the Romans, and the temple destroyed; and they were living in the hope that when 430 years from that memorable era had run their course, a career of uninterrupted prosperity was to be entered on by the Jewish people. In this anticipation, however, they showed but too clearly that they had already lost the key to the right interpretation of the mystery, which requires us, indeed, to connect the whole time specified with the 430 years formerly spent in the house of bondage, yet so as not to overlook the division of this term into the two unequal portions of 390 and 40. For in the 40 years assigned to the house of Judah, there is the recurrence of another remarkable period in the history of ancient Israel, that of the sojourn in the wilderness. We can the less suppose this latter period to have been overlooked by the prophet, as in the very structure of this part of the vision in the adoption of the principle a day for a year there is an evident reference to that passage in Numbers which records the doom of the Israelites to their long sojourn in the desert: “And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness. After the number of the days in which ye searched in the land, forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years; and ye shall know my breach of promise” (Numbers 14:32-34). (Of course it will be understood that the two periods of 430 years for Egypt, and 40 for the desert, are referred to as well-known periods of chastisement and trouble, marked historical periods of that description, although in reality a portion of each of them was not exactly of that description. Their leading character as great passages in God's dealings with his people is constantly presented in that light. There is, therefore, no necessity for raising the question, whether the whole 430 years were actually spent by the children of Israel in Egypt, or whether this period did not also comprehend the previous sojourning of the patriarchs in the land of Canaan. The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint translation have both changed the text at Exodus 12:40 so as to express this latter idea, thereby reducing the sojourn in Egypt to about the half only of the 430. This appears to have been done with the view of making the Egyptian period suit better with the genealogical table in Exodus 6, which gives only three generations between Levi and Moses. But it is well known that particular links in the chain were often omitted in such tables; and as in another table (1 Chronicles 7:23-27) so many as eight generations are given for another tribe during the same period, it might from this table be equally argued that the whole 430 years were spent in Egypt. The subject is involved in some difficulty, and cannot be summarily decided either way. But whatever the decision, is of no great moment for the case in hand. The prophet is merely to be regarded as pointing to the well-known historical period, and to it as predominantly a period of depression and bondage.)

Keeping in view, then, this twofold allusion in the periods before us to the earlier history of the covenant-people, the solution of the prophet's enigma will not occasion any extreme difficulty. But it will open itself out more easily and naturally to our view, if we first point to one or two prior revelations, which in a simpler form set forth the principle of the representation, and prepared the way for its development in the more hidden and enigmatical shape it assumes in the hands of Ezekiel. The first is the word of Moses, in Deuteronomy 28:68) where, speaking of the evils which were likely to befall the people for their sins, he says: “And the Lord shall bring thee into Egypt with ships, by the way whereof I spake to thee, Thou shalt see it no more again: and there ye shall be sold to your enemies for bondmen and bond women, and no man shall buy you.” This striking announcement of Moses had already proved a fertile word for Hosea, who says, with manifest reference to it, “Now will he remember their iniquity, and visit their sins: they shall return to Egypt.” And again: “They shall not dwell in the Lord's land: but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and they shall eat unclean things in Assyria” (Hosea 8:13; Hosea 9:3). This last clause shows beyond a doubt that when the prophet speaks of the Israelites being sent back to Egypt, it is not the exact country, but the state of bondage and misery with which, from past experience, that country had become identified in their minds, that he has in view. For as the power that was now in readiness to do the part of the oppressor was the proud Assyrian, so it was in this direction, the opposite one to where it formerly had been, that the new Egypt was to be found; they were to” eat unclean things in Assyria.” That such was really the meaning of Hosea is rendered still more manifest by another passage (Hosea 11:5): “He shall not return into the land of Egypt, but the Assyrian shall be his king.” He shall return there, and yet not return. What can this mean? what but that the Egypt-state shall once more become his, the prevalence of sin calling for another house of bondage with its oppressions and miseries, though the place where the evil was to be endured should no longer be the same: it should be transferred to Assyria? Nor, indeed, did the original announcement of Moses mean otherwise; for in the same chapter in which he held out the threat of a return to Egypt, he also speaks of their being brought to a nation “which neither they nor their fathers had known,” and of their being “scattered among all people, from one end of the earth to the other.” So that what was indicated by the return to Egypt might be found in any region of the earth where God was pleased to drive them in his anger. And the same also substantially holds of another prophecy of Hosea (chap. Hosea 2:14-15), where the Lord speaks of bringing Israel again into the wilderness, of giving them their vineyards from thence, and rendering the valley of Achor to them a door of hope; that is, he was to deal with them much as he had dealt with their forefathers, when he tried and humbled them in the wilderness.

Now, Ezekiel here resumes these earlier announcements of prophecy, and with that minuteness of detail and vividness of colouring which so remarkably characterize his prophetical delineations, throws the ideas they embody into a specific and numerical form. The covenant-people, as a whole (for they must still in some sense be regarded as one), were now again to suffer for their sins the same sort of hardship and discipline which had of old been laid upon their fathers during the period of their servitude in Egypt; the doleful past was again substantially to repeat itself in the future; the dark season of oppression and exile was again to come back with its sad and sorrowful experiences. Yet, with this general similarity, there was also a difference, a difference first in the respective spiritual conditions of the two branches of the covenant-people, and requiring to be met by a corresponding difference in the dealing they might expect from God. The house of Israel were spiritually in a much worse case than Judah; for from the time of their revolt they threw off their allegiance to God, and separated themselves from his life-giving ordinances of worship; in defiance, also,, of God's appointment, they renounced their connection with the house of David, to which, by an everlasting covenant, he had given the power and the dominion. Therefore, by much the greater part, not far from the whole of the period which symbolized the Egypt-state of bondage and exile, is assigned to this house of Israel; for with them, all, in a manner, was out of course they were on the borders of perdition they virtually needed to be again redeemed.

But with the house of Judah, notwithstanding their many sins and backslidings, there was redemption, although they had greatly impaired its value, had well-nigh rendered it of no effect, by their continued obstinacy and perverseness. They had the covenant of promise, and the tabernacle of David, with which God had irrevocably associated the good of the world. The elements of life, the true grounds of hope were theirs, yet mixed up with so much that was false and perilous, that severe and painful experiences were needed to fit them for enjoying the good that was within their reach. Therefore, if not precisely the Egypt-state of bondage in all its rigour, yet that which was most nearly akin to it, what was indeed but a continuation of it in a modified form, and in more hopeful circumstances, the course of trial and discipline in the wilderness: this must now again substantially become the portion for a season of the house of Judah. They needed it much as their fathers of old, who, even after they were redeemed from the house of bondage, still required the forty years of additional troubles and discipline in the wilderness to prepare them for the inheritance and service of God. So these degenerate children of the house of Judah, who could not be moved by all they had experienced of the goodness and severity of God to forsake their evil ways, who had seen their brethren of the house of Israel sent anew into the Egypt-state of worldly oppression and seemingly hopeless exile, and yet would not be warned to abandon the paths of ungodliness and corruption, for them now there was of necessity coming a relegation of privations and trials like those of the wilderness, through which they must be made to know, after the manner of their forefathers, the determination of God to have a people cleansed from the abominations of sin, before they could be raised to the sunshine of his favour and blessing.

Thus understood, the several parts of the vision receive a perfectly natural and harmonious meaning. Jerusalem in a state of siege represents the covenant-people as a whole straitened and oppressed by the powers of this world, as the instruments of God's just displeasure. And the prophet being appointed to bear, during its continuance, the iniquity of the people, with stinted and foul provisions, points in another form to the same visitation of evil only with a more particular respect to the cause from which it was to spring, and the penal character it should wear. That the time specified should have been in all 430 years, denoted that the dealing was to form a kind of fresh Egyptian exile and bondage to the elements of the world; but much more so in the case of the one house than in that of the other. The house of Israel having cast off nearly all that was distinctive in the position and privileges of the covenant-people, they had consequently sunk into a condition of greatest danger, one bordering on heathen darkness and perdition nigh unto cursing. What they might expect was to be bruised and crushed to the dust, as if under the rod of Egypt. But Judah was not so far gone; she had the true priesthood to minister at her altars, and the house of David to rule by Divine right over the heritage of God; so that her subjection to the powers of evil was only to be like the time of chastisement and trial in the wilderness, out of which she might again emerge into a state of peace and blessing. As the prophet also again declared in a later prophecy, “And I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples” (not the wilderness merely, but the wilderness of the peoples, to show that it was to be the same only in character as of old, but not in geographical position), “and there will I plead with you face to face; like as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so will I plead with you, saith the Lord God” (chap. Ezekiel 20:35-38). A new time of chastisement, but mingled as of old with mercy; severe and earnest dealing, but for a gracious result, that they might be refined and purified, so as to become fit for enjoying the good, which as a redeemed people was secured to them for a heritage of blessing. And if any hope remained for the other branch, the house of Israel if they were ever to escape from their state of Egyptian darkness and bondage, it must be by their going to join their brethren of Judah in the wilderness, and sharing in their peculiar treatment and prospects. On which account it is not the whole of the 430 years of the Egypt-state that is appointed toward the house of Israel in the vision, but this shortened by the 40 years of the wilderness sojourn; to teach them that a way still lay open for their return to life, but only by their having the Egypt-state merged into that of the wilderness; in other words, by ceasing from their rank idolatries and open apostacy from the way of God, and coming to seek, along with Judah, through God's covenant and ordinances, a restoration to righteousness, and peace, and blessing. (It may not be improper to note further, that it is the prophet's desire to make quite plain the reference for Judah to the 40 years sojourn in the wilderness, and the modified character of the evil this suggested, that an explanation arises of an apparent anomaly, of which no express notice has been taken above. At Ezekiel 4:9 he is ordered to “make bread according to the number of the days that he should lie upon his side; three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof.” Here the 40 days are left out, although daring them also he was to lie upon his side, not, as commentators generally, and still also Hävernick, suppose, from the first period being by much the larger of the two, and as such standing for the whole; but to keep the reference clear to the distinctive character of the wilderness-period, which was the point chiefly to be had in view by the Jewish exiles. The eating of polluted bread as a symbol properly implied a constrained residence in a Gentile country an unclean region; hence, in the explanation given of the symbol at Ezekiel 4:13, it is declared of the house of Israel, that “they shall eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles.” But in the wilderness Israel stood quite separate from the Gentiles, though still under penal treatment, and in a sense still connected with Egypt (hence “the wilderness of Egypt,” 20:36); and so they who were in a manner to return to that state again were merely to “eat bread by weight, and with care, and drink water by measure, and in desolateness;” i.e. a state of chastisement and trouble, but not by any means so heathen-like, so depressed and helpless, as the other. It is proper to state that the path to the right interpretation of the vision as a whole began to be opened up by Hengstenberg in his Christology and his work on the Pentateuch, though without any special reference to this passage of Ezekiel. Hävernick has taken the right course in regard to its general character; but by understanding the first part of an actual siege of Jerusalem, and the eating of defiled bread only of subsequent calamities, he has greatly embarrassed his interpretation; he has also failed to bring fully out the application of the periods of chastisement to Israel and Judah respectively.)

4. But why should the prophet, in thus announcing the future dealings of God, have thrown the delineation into so peculiar, so enigmatical a form? Why should he have presented it to the view as a returning again “of the years of former generations?”

Not, certainly, on the principle of a bald and meagre literalism, as if he meant us to understand that the clock of Providence was actually to be turned back, and the identical ground trodden over again, the precise measures of time filled up anew of which we read in the earlier history of the chosen race. He who would interpret in such a style the symbolical visions of an Ezekiel, is incapable of entering into the rapt emotions of such a mind, and must necessarily flounder at every step. For here we have to do not only with a lively and fervid spirit, which is ever breathing life, as it were, into the dead, but that spirit in a state of ecstatic elevation, in which the mind naturally served itself of the more remarkable facts and providences in the past; yet only as aids to the utterance of prophetic thought, appropriate forms wherein to clothe the new things concerning God's kingdom, that were through the Spirit imaging themselves to the prophet's vision. And, indeed, the very imperfection that usually appears in the frame of such historical visions as compared with the past realities, the partial mingling together here, for example, of the two great consecutive periods of past judgment and trial in the history of the covenant-people, so as to make the second begin before the first had ended, this very imperfection shows, as it was doubtless intended to do, that an exact reproduction of the past was not in the eye of the prophet; and that the nature of God's contemplated designs, rather than any definite bounds and limits respecting them, was imaged under those ancient periods of tribulation in Egypt and the wilderness.

There were three reasons chiefly why the prophets in general, and this prophet in particular, might be often led to speak of the future under the form and image of the past. In the first place, as the meaning obviously did not lie upon the surface, it called for serious thought and inquiry regarding the purposes of God. A time of general backsliding and corruption is always a time of superficial thinking on spiritual things. And just as our Lord by his parables, that partly veiled while they disclosed the truth of God, so the prophets by their more profound and enigmatical discourses, sought to arouse the careless from their security, to awaken inquiry, and stir the depths of thought and feeling in the soul. It virtually said to them, You are in imminent peril; direct ordinary discourse no longer suits your case; bestir your selves to look into the depths of things, otherwise the sleep of death shall overtake you.

Then, again, it conveyed in a few words, by means of a brief allusion, what the most lengthened description without it could scarcely have accomplished. It was employing a device which the most powerful and effective orators have sometimes resorted to with the greatest effect, as in the memorable words of Mirabeau, when, wishing to repel the thought of danger, he flashed out the pregnant interrogation, “Is Hannibal at the gates?” In like manner the prophet here, seeking to impress upon his countrymen the certainty and the awfulness of God's impending judgments on account of sin, carries them back to the past; he brings up to their view Egypt and the wilderness as ready to renew themselves again in their experience. What thoughts of terror and alarm were these fitted to awaken in their minds! Centuries of bondage and oppression! A wearisome sojourn amid drought and desolation! And then this foreshadowing of the future, not only rendered more distinct, but also strengthened as to its credibility, authenticated by those stern realities of the past! It assuredly has been, shall it not be again?

But this suggests another and indeed still deeper reason for such a mode of representation having been adopted. For such renewed exhibitions of the past were among the means specially chosen by God for the purpose of enforcing on men's notice the uniformity of his dealings, and teaching them to regard the providential facts of one age as substantial predictions of what are to be expected in another. It told men then, and it tells us now (only it was more peculiarly adapted to those who lived in ancient times, as the revelations they possessed consisted, much more than now, in the records of history yet it tells all alike), that the forms alone are transitory in which Divine truth and righteousness manifest themselves, while the principles embodied in these forms are eternal, and can never cease, amid all outward varieties, to be giving forth similar exhibitions of their life and power to those which have already appeared. The eye that can thus look through the shell into the kernel may see the future things of God's administration mirrored in the past, not, indeed, the exact copy and image of what is to be, yet its essential character and necessary result. Even those very periods of bygone tribulation and chastisement, which the prophet here represents as coming to life again in his day, have they not also a voice for other times? Are they not still reiterating their lessons, and perpetually renewing their existences, in the case of impenitent transgressors, now as well as formerly, in that of drooping exiles in the cities of the Medes, or on the banks of Chebar? One of these periods the sojourn in the wilderness the Baptist still finds prolonging itself to the era of his own ministry. His word of stern expostulation and solemn warning makes itself heard as “the voice of one crying in the wilderness;” for he sees everywhere around him trackless deserts, where ways of God need to be opened up, elements of corruption working which require to be purged away by the searching application of Divine righteousness, before the Canaan of God's inheritance can be properly entered and enjoyed. And the lukewarm and fruitless professor still, so long as he cleaves to the ways of iniquity, and refuses to yield a hearty surrender to the will of God, what else is his condition? He is in bondage to the elements of the world, and therefore can have no part in that good inheritance which floweth with milk and honey. The doom of Heaven's condemnation hangs suspended over his head; and if not averted by a timely submission to the righteousness of God, and a cordial entrance into the bond of the covenant, he shall infallibly perish in the wilderness of sin and death.