Ezekiel 3
Eze 3:1-3 After the Lord had pointed out to the prophet the difficulties of the call laid upon him, He prepared him for the performance of his office, by inspiring him with the divine word which he is to announce. - Eze 2:8. And thou, son of man, hear what I say to thee, Be not stiff-necked like the stiff-necked race; open thy mouth, and eat what I give unto thee. Eze 2:9 . Then I saw, and, lo, a hand outstretched towards me; and, lo, in the same a roll of a book. Eze 2:10 . And He spread it out before me; the same was written upon the front and back: and there were written upon it lamentations, and sighing, and woe. Eze 3:1 . And He said to me: Son of man, what thou findest eat; eat the roll, and go and speak to the house of Israel. Eze 3:2 . Then opened I my mouth, and He gave me this roll to eat. Eze 3:3 . And said to me: Son of man, feed thy belly, and fill thy body with this roll which I give thee. And I ate it, and it was in my mouth as honey and sweetness. - The prophet is to announce to the people of Israel only that which the Lord inspires him to announce. This thought is embodied in symbol, in such a way that an outstretched hand reaches to him a book, which he is to swallow, and which also, at God’s command, he does swallow; cf. Rev 10:9. This roll was inscribed on both sides with lamentations, sighing, and woe (הי is either abbreviated from נהי, not = אי, or as Ewald, §101 c, thinks, is only a more distinct form of הוי or הו). The meaning is not, that upon the roll was inscribed a multitude of mournful expressions of every kind, but that there was written upon it all that the prophet was to announce, and what we now read in his book. These contents were of a mournful nature, for they related to the destruction of the kingdom, the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple. That Ezekiel may look over the contents, the roll is spread out before his eyes, and then handed to him to be eaten, with the words, “Go and speak to the children of Israel,” i.e., announce to the children of Israel what you have received into yourself, or as it is termed in Eze 3:4, דּברי, “my words.” The words in Eze 3:3 were spoken by God while handing to the prophet the roll to be eaten. He is not merely to eat, i.e., take it into his mouth, but he is to fill his body and belly therewith, i.e., he is to receive into his innermost being the word of God presented to him, to change it, as it were, into sap and blood. Whilst eating it, it was sweet in his mouth. The sweet taste must not, with Kliefoth, be explained away into a sweet “after-taste,” and made to bear this reference, that the destruction of Jerusalem would be followed by a more glorious restoration. The roll, inscribed with lamentation, sorrow, and woe, tasted to him sweetly, because its contents was God’s word, which sufficed for the joy and gladness of his heart (Jer 15:16); for it is “infinitely sweet and lovely to be the organ and spokesman of the Omnipotent,” and even the most painful of divine truths possess to a spiritually-minded man a joyful and quickening side (Hengstenberg on Rev 10:9). To this it is added, that the divine penal judgments reveal not only the holiness and righteousness of God, but also prepare the way for the revelation of salvation, and minister to the saving of the soul.Eze 3:4-21. The Sending op the Prophet. —
This consists in God's promise to give him power to overcome the difficulties of his vocation (vers. 4-9); in next transporting him to the place where he is to labour (vers. 10-15; and lastly, in laying upon him the responsibility of the souls entrusted to his charge (vers. 16-21). After Ezekiel had testified, by eating the roll which had been given him, his willingness to announce the word of the Lord, the Lord acquaints him with the peculiar difficulties of his vocation, and promises to bestow upon him strength to overcome them. — Ver. 4. And He said to me, Son of man, go away to the house of Israel, and speak with my words to them. Ver. 5. For not to a people of hollow lips and heavy tongue art thou sent, (but) to the house of Israel. Ver. 6. Not to many nations of hollow lips and heavy tongue, whose words thou dost not understand ; but to them have I sent thee, they can understand thee. Ver. 7. But the house of Israel will not hear thee, because they will not hear me ; for the whole house of Israel, of hard brow and hardened heart are they. Ver. 8. Lo, I make thy countenance hard like their countenances, and thy brow hard like their brow. Ver. 9. hike to adamant, horde)- than rock, do I make thy brow : fear not, and tremble not before them, for they are a stiff-necked race. — The contents of this section present a great similarity to those in ch. ii. 3-7, inasmuch as here as well as there the obduracy and stiff-neckedness of Israel is stated as a hindrance which opposes the success of Ezekiel's work. This is done here, however, in a different relation than there, so that there is no tautology. Here, where the Lord is sending the prophet, He first brings prominently forward what lightens the performance of his mission ; and next, the obduracy of Israel, which surrounds it with difficulty for him, in order at the same time to promise him strength for the vanquishing of these difficulties. Ezekiel is to speak, in the words communicated to him by God, to the house (people) of Israel. This he can do, because Israel is not a foreign nation with an unintelligible language, but possesses the capacity of understanding the words of the prophet (vers. 5-7), עַ֣ם שָׂפָה֙ עַמִּ֣ים, “a people of deep lips,” i.e. of a style of speech hollow, and hard to be understood ; cf. Isa 33:19. עִמְקֵ֤י שָׂ is not genitive, and עַ֣ם is not the status constructus, but an adjective belonging to עַ֣ם, and used in the plural, because עַ֣ם contains a collective conception. “And of heavy tongue,” i.e. with a language the understanding of which is attended with great difficulty. Both epithets denote a barbarously sounding, unintelligible, foreign tongue. The unintelligibility of a language, however, does not alone consist in unacquaintance with the meaning of its words and sounds, but also in the peculiarities of each nation's style of thought, of which language is only the expression in sounds. In this respect we may, with Coccejus and Kliefoth, refer the prophet's inability to understand the language of the heathen to this, that their manner of thinking and speaking was not formed according to the word of God, but was developed out of purely earthly, and even God-resisting factors. Only the exclusive prominence given by Kliefoth to this side of the subject is incorrect, because irreconcilable with the words, “many nations, whose words (discourse) thou dost not understand” (ver. 6). These words show that the unintelligibility of the language lies in not understanding the sounds of its words. Before אֶל־בֵּ֖ית יִשְׂ, in ver. 5, the adversative particle sed is omitted (cf. Ewald, § 354a) ; the omission here is perhaps caused by this, that אַתָּ֣ה שָׁל֑וּחַ, in consequence of its position between both sentences, can be referred to both. In ver. 6 the thought of ver. 5 is expanded by the addition of עַמִּ֣ים רַבִּ֗ים “many nations” with different languages, in order to show that it is not in the ability, but in the willingness, to hear the word of the Lord that the Israelites are wanting. It is not to many nations with unintelligible languages that God is sending the prophet, but to such men as are able to hear him, i.e. can understand his language. The second hemistich of ver. 6 is rendered by the old translators as if they had not read לֹ֤א after אִם, “if I sent thee to them (the heathen), they would hear thee.” Modern expositors have endeavoured to extract this meaning, either by taking אִם לֹ֤א as a particle of adjuration, profecto, “verily” (Rosenmüller, Hävernick, and others), or reading אם לֹ֤א as Ewald does, after Gen 23:13. But the one is as untenable as the other : against אִם־לֹ֤א stands the fact that לו is written with ו, not with א; against the view that it is a particle of adjuration, stands partly the position of the words before אֲלֵיהֶם֙ שְׁלַ, which, according to the sense, must belong to הטהישמ׳, partly the impossibility of taking שְׁלַחְתִּ֔יךָ conditionally after the preceding אִם־לֹ֤א. “If such were the case, Ezekiel would have really done all he could to conceal his meaning” (Hitzig), for אִם־לֹ֤א, after a negative sentence preceding, signifies “but;” cf. Gen. 24:38. Consequently neither the one view nor the other yields an appropriate sense. "If I had sent thee to the heathen," involves a repenting of the act, which is not beseeming in God. Against the meaning “profecto” is the consideration that the idea, “Had I sent thee to the heathen, verily they would hear thee,” is in contradiction with the designation of the heathen as those whose language the prophet does not understand. If the heathen spoke a language unintelligible to the prophet, they consequently did not understand his speech, and could not therefore comprehend his preaching. It only remains, then, to apply the sentence simply to the Israelites, “not to heathen nations, but to the Israelites have I sent thee,” and to take שׁמ֖עד as potential, “they are able to fear thee,” “they can understand thy words.” This in ver. 7 is closed by the antithesis “But the house of Israel will not hear tliee, because they will not hear me (Jehovah), as they are morally hardened.” With 7b, cf. Jer 2:4, The Lord, however, will provide His prophet with power to resist this obduracy ; will lend him unbending courage and unshaken firmness, ver. 8 ; cf. Jer. 15:20. He will make his brow hard as adamant (cf. Zech 7:12), which is harder than rock ; therefore he shall not fear before the obduracy of Israel. צ֗ר, as in Ex 4:25, =צ֗רך. As parallel passages in regard of the subject-matter, cf. Isa 1:7 and Jer 1:18. Vers. 10-15. Prepared then for his vocation, Ezekiel is now transported to the sphere of his activity. — Ver. 10. And He said to me, Son of man, all m,y words which 1 shall speak to thee, take into thy heart, and hear with thine ears. Ver. 11. And go to the exiles, to the children of thy people, and speak to them, and say to them, “Tims saith the Lord Jehovah,” whether they may hear thee or fail (to hear thee). Ver, 12. And a wind raised me up, and I heard behind me the voice of a great tumult, “Praised he the glory of Jehovah,” from, their place hitherward. Ver, 13, And the noise of the wings of the creatures touching each other, and the noise of the wheels beside them, the noise of a great tumult. Ver. 14. And a wind raised me up, and took me, and I went thither embittered in the warmth of my spirit ; and the hand of Jehovah was strong upon me. Ver, 15. And I came to Tel-Abib to the exiles, who dwelled by the river Chebar, and where they sat there sat I down seven days, motionless and dumb, in their midst. — The apparent hysteron proteron, “take into thy heart, and hear with thine ears” (ver. 10), disappears so soon as it is observed that the clause “ hear with thine ears” is connected with the following “go to the exiles,” etc. The meaning is not, “postquam auribus tuis percepisses mea mandata, ea ne oblivioni tradas, sed corde suscipe et animo infige” (Rosen- müller), but this, “All my words which I shall speak to thee lay to heart, that thou mayest obey them. When thou hast heard my words with thine ears, then go to the exiles and an- nounce them to them.” With ver. 11 cf. Jer 2:4-5. Observe that it is still בנ֣י עמ֔ך , “the children of thy” (not “my”) “people.” Stiff-necked Israel is no longer Jehovah's people. The command “to go to the people” is, in ver. 12 sqq., immediately executed by the prophet, the wind raising him up and transporting him to Tel-Abib, among the exiles, ר֔וח, phenomenally considered, is a wind of which God makes use to conduct the prophet to the scene of his labour ; but the wind is only the sensible substratum of the spirit which transports him thither. The representation is, that “he was borne thither through the air by the wind” (Kliefoth) ; but not as Jerome and Kliefoth suppose, in ipso corpore, i.e. so that an actual bodily removal through the air took place, but the raising up and taking away by the wind was effected in spirit in the condition of ecstasy. Not a syllable indicates that the theophany was at an end before this removal ; the contrary rather is clearly indicated by the remark that Ezekiel heard behind him the noise of the wings of the cherubim and of the wheels. And that the words תִּשָּׂאֵ֣נִי ר֔וּחַ do not necessitate us to suppose a bodily removal is shown by the comparison with Eze 8:3, Eze 11:1, 24, where Kliefoth also understands the same words in a spiritual sense of a merely internal — i.e. experienced in a state of ecstasy — removal of the prophet to Jerusalem and back again to Chaldea. The great noise which Ezekiel hears behind him proceeds, at least in part, from the appearance of the כְּבוֹד־יְה being set in motion, but (according to ver. 13) not in order to remove itself from the raptured prophet, but by changing its present position, to attend the prophet to the sphere of his labour. It tells decidedly in favour of this supposition, that the prophet, according to ver. 23, again sees around him the same theophany in the valley where he begins his work. This reappearance, indeed-, presupposes that it had previously disappeared from his sight, but the disappearance is to be supposed as taking place only after his call has been completed, i.e. after ver. 21. While being removed in a condition of ecstasy, Ezekiel heard the rushing sound, “Praised be the glory of Jehovah.” מִמְּקוֹמֽוֹ belongs not to גָּד֑וֹ בָּר֥וּךְ, which would yield no appropriate sense, but to אֶשְׁמַ֣ע, where it makes no difference of importance in the meaning whether the suffix is referred to יהןח or to כְּבוֹד. Ezekiel heard the voice of the praise of God's glory issuing forth from the place where Jehovah or His glory were to be found, i. e. where they had appeared to the prophet, not at all from the temple. Who sounded this song of praise is not mentioned. Close by Ezekiel heard the sound, the rustling of the wings of the cherubim setting themselves in motion, and how the wings came into contact with the tips of each other, touched each other (מִמְּקוֹמֽוֹ, from גְּשׁק, “to join,” “to touch one another”). Ver. 14 describes the prophet's mood of mind as he is carried away. Raised by the wind, and carried on, he went, i.e. drove thither, מַר֙ בַּחֲמַ֣ת רוּחִ֔, “bitter in the heat of his spirit.” Although מַר֙ is used as well of grief and mourning as of wrath and displeasure, yet mourning and sorrow are not appropriate to חֲמַ֣ת “warmth of spirit,” “anger.” The supposition, however, that sorrow as well as anger were in him, or that he was melancholy while displeased (Kliefoth), is incompatible with the fundamental idea of מַר֙ as “sharp,” “bitter.” Ezekiel feels himself deeply roused, even to the bitterness of anger, partly by the obduracy of Israel, partly by the commission to announce to this obdurate people, without any prospect of success, the word of the Lord. To so heavy a task he feels himself unequal, therefore his natural man rebels against the Spirit of God, which, seizing him with a strong and powerful grasp, tears him away to the place of his work ; and he would seek to withdraw himself from the divine call, as Moses and Jonah once did. The hand of the Lord, however, was strong upon him, i.e. “held him up in this inner struggle with unyielding power” (Kliefoth) ; cf.Isa 8:11. חֶזְקַ֣, “firm”, “strong,” differs from כְבַּ֥ד, “heavy,” Ps 32:4. תֵּ֣ל אָ֠בִיב, i.e. “the hill of ears,” is the name of the place where resided a colony of the exiles. The place was situated on the river Chebar (see on Isa 50:3), and derived its name, no doubt, from the fertility of the valley, rich in grain (הַבִּקְעָה֒, ver. 23), by which it was surrounded; nothing further, however, is known of it; cf. Gesen. Thesaur. p. 1505. The Chetib ואשר, at which the Masoretes and many expositors have unnecessarily taken offence, is to be read וָאֵשֵׁ֥ר, and to be joined with the following שָׁ֛ם, “where they sat” (so rightly the Chaldee, Syriac, and Vulgate). That this signification would be expressed differently, as Hitzig thinks, cannot be established by means of Job 39:30. The Keri וָאֵשֵׁ֥ב is not only unnecessary, but also inappropriate, which holds true also of other conjectures of modern expositors. Ezekiel sat there seven days, מַשְׁמִ֥ים, i.e., neither “deprived of sensation,” nor “being silent,” but as the partic. Hiphil from שְׁמִ֥ם, as מְשׁוֹמֵֽם in Ezr 9:3-4, “rigidly without moving,” therefore “motionless and dumb.” The seven days are not regarded as a period of mourning, in support of which Job 2:13 is referred to; but as both the purification and the dedication and preparation for a holy service is measured by the number seven, as being the number of God's works (cf. Ex 29:29 sqq.; Lev 8:33 sqq.; 2Chr 29:17), so Ezekiel sits for a week “motionless and dumb,” to master the impression which the word of God, conveyed to him in ecstatic vision, had made upon his mind, and to prepare and sanctify himself for his vocation (Kliefoth). Vers. 16-21. When these seven days are completed, there comes to him the final word, which appoints him watchman over Israel, and places before him the task and responsibility of his vocation. — Ver. 16. And it came to pass after the lapse of seven days, that the word of Jehovah came to me as follows: Ver. 17. Son of man, I have set thee to be a watchman over the house of Israel; thou shalt hear the Lord from my mouth, and thou shalt warn them from me Ver. 18. If I say to the sinner, Thou shalt surely die, and thou warnest him not, and speakest not to warn the sinner from his evil way that he may live, then shall he, the sinner, die because of his evil deeds, but his blood will I require at thy hand, Ver. 19. But if thou warnest the sinner and he turn not from his wickedness and his evil way, then shall he die because of his evil deeds, but thou hast saved thy soul. Ver. 20. And if a righteous man turn from his righteousness, and do unrighteousness, and I lay a stumbling block before his, then shall he die; if thou hast not warned him, he shall die because of his sin, and his righteousness which he has done shall not be remembered, but his blood will I require at thy hand. Ver. 21. But if thou warnest him — the righteous man — so that the righteous man sin not, and he do not sin, then will he live, because he has been warned, and thou hast saved thy soul. — As a prophet for Israel, Ezekiel is like one standing upon a watch- tower (Hab 2:1), to watch over the condition of the people, and warn them of the dangers that threaten them (Jer 6:17 ; Isa 56:10). As such, he is responsible for the souls entrusted to his charge. From the mouth of Jehovah, i.e. according; to God's word, he is to admonish the wicked to turn from their evil ways, that they die not in their sins. ֚֭טׅטֶּגִּי, “from me,” i.e. in my name, and with my commission. “If I say to the sinner,” i.e. if I commission thee to say to him (Kimchi). As מ֥וֹת תָּמֽוּת reminds us of Gen 2:17, so is the threatening, “his blood will I require at thy hand,” an allusion to Gen 9:5. If the prophet does not warn the wicked man, as God has commanded him, he renders himself guilty of a deadly sin, for which God will take vengeance on him as on the murderer for the shedding of blood. An awfully solemn statement for all ministers of the word. הָרְשָׁעָ֖ה, in vers. 18 and 19, at which the LXX. have stumbled, so that they have twice omitted it, is not a substantive, and to be changed, with Hitzig, into רְשָׁעָ֖ה, but is an adjective, foemin. gen., and belongs to דַּרְכּ֥וֹ, which is construed as feminine. The righteous man who backslides is, before God, regarded as equal with the sinner who persists in his sin, if the former, notwithstanding the warning, perseveres in his backsliding (ver. 20 sqq.). שׁ֨וּב מִצִּדְקוֹ֙, “to turn oneself from his righteousness,” denotes the formal falling away from the path of righteousness, not mere “stumbling or sinning from weakness.”עָ֣שָׂה עָ֔וֶל, “to do unrighteousness,” “to act perversely,” is “se prorsus dedere impietati” (Calvin). וְנָתַתִּ֥י מִכְשׁ֛וֹל belongs still to the protasis, ה֣וּא יָמ֑וּת forming the apodosis, not a relative sentence, — as Ewald and Hitzig suppose, — “so that he, or, in consequence of which, he die.” מִכְשׁ֛וֹל, “object of offence,” by which any one comes to fall, is not destruction, considered as punishment deserved (Calvin, Havernick), but everything that God puts in the way of the sinner, in order that the sin, which is germinating in his soul, may come forth to the light, and ripen to maturity. God, indeed, neither causes sin, nor desires the death of the sinner; and in this sense He does not tempt to evil (Jas 1:13), but He guides and places the sinner in relations in life in which he must come to a decision for or against what is good and divine, and either suppress the sinful lusts of his heart, or burst the barriers which are opposed to their satisfaction. If he does not do the former, but the latter, evil gains within him more and more strength, so that he becomes the servant of sin, and finally reaches a point where conversion is impossible. In this consists theמִכְשׁ֛וֹל, which God places before him, who turns away from righteousness to unrighteousness or evil, but not in this, that God lets man run on in order that he may die or perish. For יָמ֑וּת does not stand for זמ֑ת, and there is therefore no ground for a change of punctuation to carry forward Athnach to הִזְהַרְתּוֹ֙ (Hitzig). For the subject spoken of is not that the backsliding righteous man “in general only dies if he is not warned” (Hitzig), — that meaning is not in ver. 21, “that he, in contrast to the רָשָׁ֔ע, gives sure obedience to the warning,” — but only the possibility is supposed that a צַדִּ֗יק, who has transgressed upon the way of evil, will yield obedience to the warning, but not that he will of a certainty do this. As with the רָשָׁ֔ע in ver. 19, only the case of his resisting the warning is expressly mentioned ; while the opposite case — that he may, in consequence of the warning, be converted — is not excluded ; so in ver. 21, with the צַדִּ֗יק, who has entered upon the path of unrighteousness, only the case of conversion in consequence of the warning is expressly mentioned, without the possibility of his hardening himself against the prophet's word being thereby excluded. For the instruction of the prophet it was sufficient to bring forward the two cases mentioned, as it appears from them that in the one case as well as in the other he has done his duty, and saved his soul.CHAP. III. 22- V. 17. THE DESTINY OF JERUSALEM AND ITS INHABITANTS.
Vers. 22—27 in Eze 3, no longer belong to the prophet's inauguration and introduction into office, nor do they form the conclusion of his call, but the introduction to his first prophetic act and prediction, as has been rightly recognized by Ewald and Kliefoth. This appears already from the introductory formula, “The hand of Jehovah came upon me” (ver. 22), and, more distinctly still, from the glory of Jehovah appearing anew to the prophet (when, in obedience to a divine impulse, he had gone down into the valley), in the form in which he had seen it by the river Chebar, and giving him a commission to announce by word and symbol the siege of Jerusalem, and the fate of its inhabitants. For, that the divine commission did not consist merely in the general directions, Eze 3:25-27, but is first given in its principal parts in ch. iv. and v., is indisputably evident from the repetition of the words וְאַתָּ֣ה בֶן־אָדָ֗ם in Eze 3:25, 4:1, and v. 1. With וְאַתָּ֣ה neither can the first nor, in general, a new prophecy begin. This has been recognised by Hitzig himself in ch. iv. 1, where he remarks that the first of the three oracles which follow down to viii. 1, and which he makes begin with Eze 4:1, “attaches itself to Eze 3:25-27 as a continuation of the same.” But what holds true of Eze 4:1 must hold true also of Eze 3:25, viz. that no new oracle can begin with this verse, but that it is connected with Eze 3:22-24. The commencement, then, we have to seek in the formula, “and the hand of Jehovah came upon me” (Eze 3:22), with which also Eze 8:1 (where only PaW stands instead of וַתְּהִ֥י) and Eze 40:1 — new oracles — are introduced. No doubt these passages are preceded by chronological notices, while in Eze 3:22 every note of time is wanting. But nothing further can be inferred from this, than that the divine word contained in 3:25-v. 17 was imparted to the prophet immediately after his consecration and call, so that it still falls under the date of Eze 1:2; which may also be discovered from this, that the שָׁ֖ם in ver. 22 points to the locality named in ver. 15. Immediately after his call, then, and still in the same place where the last word of calling (eze 3:16-21) was addressed to him, namely, at Tel-Abib, in the midst of the exiles, Ezekiel received the first divine revelation which, as prophet, he was to announce to the people. This revelation is introduced by the words in ch. iii. 22-24; and divided into three sections by the thrice-occurring, similar address, “And thou, son of man” (Eze 3:25, 4:1, 5:1). In the first section, Eze 3:25-27, God gives him general injunctions as to his conduct while carrying out the divine commission ; in the second, ch. 4. He commands him to represent symbolically the siege of Jerusalem with its miseries ; and in the third, ch. v., the destiny of the inhabitants after the capture of the city. Eze. 3:22-27. Introduction to the first prophetic announcement. — Ver. 22. And there came upon me there the hand of Jehovah, and He said to me, Up I go into the valley, there will 1 speak to thee. Ver. 23. And I arose, and went into the valley : and, lo, there stood the glory of Jehovah, like the glory which I had seen at the river Chebar: and I fell upon my face. Ver. 24. And spirit came into me, and placed me on my feet, and He spake with we, and said to me. Go, and shut thyself in thy house. — הַבִּקְעָ֔ה is, without doubt, the valley situated near Tel-Abib. Ezekiel is to go out from the midst of the exiles — where, according to ver. 15, he had found himself — into the valley, because God will reveal Himself to him only in solitude. When he had complied with this command, there appears to him there the glory of Jehovah, in the same form in which it had appeared to him at the Chaboras (Eze 1:4-28) ; before it he falls, a second time, on his face ; but is also, as on the first occasion, again raised to his feet, cf. Eze 1:28-2:2. Hereupon the Lord commands him to shut himself up in his house, — which doubtless he inhabited in Tel-Abib, — not probably “as a sign of his future destiny,” as a realistic explanation of the words, “Thou canst not walk in their midst (ver. 25) ; they will prevent thee by force from freely exercising thy vocation in the midst of the people.” For in that case the “shutting of himself up in the house” would be an arbitrary identification with the “ binding with fetters” (ver. 25) ; and besides, the significance of the address וְאַתָּ֣ה בֶן־אָדָ֗ם, and its repetition in Eze 4:1 and v. 1, would be misconceived. For as in Eze 4:1 and Eze 5:1 there are introduced with this address the principal parts of the duty which Ezekiel was to perform, so the proper divine instruction may also first begin with the same in Ezz 3:25; consequently the command “to shut himself up in his house ” can only have the significance of a preliminary divine injunction, without possessing any significancy in itself ; but only “serve as a means for carrying out what the prophet is commissioned to do in the following chapters ” (Kliefoth), i.e. can only mean that he is to perform in his own house what is commanded him in ch. 4. and 5., or that he is not to leave his house during their performance. More can hardly be sought in this injunction, nor can it at all be taken to mean that, having shut himself up from others in his house, he is to allow no one to approach him ; but only that he is not to leave his dwelling. For, according to Eze 4:3, the symbolical representation of the siege of Jerusalem is to be a sign for the house of Israel ; and according to Eze 4:12, Ezekiel is, during this symbolical action, to bake his bread before their eyes. From this it is seen that his contemporaries might come to him and observe his proceedings.Introduction to the first prophetic announcement. -
Eze 3:22.And there came upon me there the hand of Jehovah, and He said to me, Up! go into the valley, there will I speak to thee. Eze 3:23 . And I arose, and went into the valley: and, lo, there stood the glory of Jehovah, like the glory which I had seen at the river Chebar: and I fell upon my face. Eze 3:24 . And spirit came into me, and placed me on my feet, and He spake with me, and said to me, Go, and shut thyself in thy house. - הבּקעה is, without doubt, the valley situated near Tel-abib. Ezekiel is to go out from the midst of the exiles - where, according to Eze 3:15, he had found himself-into the valley, because God will reveal Himself to him only in solitude. When he had complied with this command, there appears to him there the glory of Jehovah, in the same form in which it had appeared to him at the Chaboras (Ezekiel 1:4-28); before it he falls, a second time, on his face; but is also, as on the first occasion, again raised to his feet, cf. 1:28-2:2. Hereupon the Lord commands him to shut himself up in his house - which doubtless he inhabited in Tel-Abib - not probably “as a sign of his future destiny,” as a realistic explanation of the words, “Thou canst not walk in their midst (Eze 3:25); they will prevent thee by force from freely exercising thy vocation in the midst of the people.” For in that case the “shutting of himself up in the house” would be an arbitrary identification with the “binding with fetters” (Eze 3:25); and besides, the significance of the address ואתּה בן אדם, and its repetition in Eze 4:1 and Eze 5:1, would be misconceived. For as in Eze 4:1 and Eze 5:1 there are introduced with this address the principal parts of the duty which Ezekiel was to perform, so the proper divine instruction may also first begin with the same in Eze 3:25; consequently the command “to shut himself up in his house” can only have the significance of a preliminary divine injunction, without possessing any significance in itself; but only “serve as a means for carrying out what the prophet is commissioned to do in the following chapters” (Kliefoth), i.e., can only mean that he is to perform in his own house what is commanded him in Ezekiel 4 and 5, or that he is not to leave his house during their performance. More can hardly be sought in this injunction, nor can it at all be taken to mean that, having shut himself up from others in his house, he is to allow no one to approach him; but only that he is not to leave his dwelling. For, according to Eze 4:3, the symbolical representation of the siege of Jerusalem is to be a sign for the house of Israel; and according to Eze 4:12, Ezekiel is, during this symbolical action, to bake his bread before their eyes. From this it is seen that his contemporaries might come to him and observe his proceedings.
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