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Ezekiel Chapter
Thirty-five
Ezekiel 35
Chapter Contents
A prophecy against Edom.
Commentary on Ezekiel 35:1-9
(Read Ezekiel 35:1-9)
All who have God against them, have the word of God
against them. Those that have a constant hatred to God and his people, as the
carnal mind has, can only expect to be made desolate for ever.
Commentary on Ezekiel 35:10-15
(Read Ezekiel 35:10-15)
When we see the vanity of the world in the
disappointments, losses, and crosses, which others meet with, instead of
showing ourselves greedy of worldly things, we should sit more loose to them.
In the multitude of words, not one is unknown to God; not the most idle word;
and the most daring is not above his rebuke. In the destruction of the enemies of
the church, God designs his own glory; and we may be sure that he will not come
short of his design. And when the fulness of the Jews and Gentiles shall come
into the church, all antichristian opposers shall be destroyed.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Ezekiel》
Ezekiel 35
Verse 2
[2] Son of man, set thy face against mount Seir, and
prophesy against it,
Mount Seir — The Edomites, who inhabited it.
Verse 5
[5] Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed
the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of
their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end:
Their iniquity — When their iniquity was punished
on them, which brought them to final ruin.
Verse 6
[6] Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will prepare
thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee: sith thou hast not hated blood,
even blood shall pursue thee.
And blood — Thy guilt, and my just revenge of
innocent blood.
Hast not hated — Thou hast loved, rather than
hated, blood-shed; therefore vengeance for it follows thee.
Verse 7
[7] Thus will I make mount Seir most desolate, and cut off
from it him that passeth out and him that returneth.
That passeth out — All travellers that
go to or from Edom.
Verse 9
[9] I will make thee perpetual desolations, and thy cities
shall not return: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.
Return — To their former glory.
Verse 10
[10] Because thou hast said, These two nations and these two
countries shall be mine, and we will possess it; whereas the LORD was there:
Though — Though God was with Israel.
Verse 11
[11] Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will even do
according to thine anger, and according to thine envy which thou hast used out
of thy hatred against them; and I will make myself known among them, when I
have judged thee.
Judged — Punished thee.
Verse 14
[14] Thus saith the Lord GOD; When the whole earth rejoiceth,
I will make thee desolate.
The whole earth — The inhabitants of all the
countries round about thee.
Rejoiceth — Is in peace and plenty.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Ezekiel》
35 Chapter 35
Verses 1-15
Verses 8-15
But ye . . . shall shoot forth your branches.
The Divine benison
When does God give short measure? When did He give otherwise than
pressed down, heaped up, running over? This is the consolation of heaven; this
is the measure of the Divine benison.
1. That blessing is to be physical: “Ye shall shoot forth your
branches, and yield your fruit.” God is not ashamed to have His name connected
with the daily loaf and with the daily goblet of water. When we go to the
harvest field we should think we ace going to church; when we go to the well of
springing water we should think we are going to a fountain rising in heaven.
Your harvests are God’s; your fields are the green ways leading up to His
sanctuary.
2. Not only physical, but social: “I will multiply men upon you . . .
and the wastes shall be builded.” God would have all the earth inhabited. He
would build men into organisations and brotherhoods; He would establish
fraternities of souls. The Lord is never ashamed to associate Himself with
social economy, social purity, social progress.
3. Not only physical and social, but municipal: “And the cities shaft
be inhabited.” Cities have not a good history; cities had a bad founder. The
foundations of cities were laid by a murderer. But it hath pleased God to
accept many human doings, and to purify them and ennoble them and turn them to
purposes sanctified and most beneficial. The Lord never set king over anybody
with His own real consent. He gave the people the desire of their hearts, and
plagued them every day since they got the answer. So He accepts the city, and
He will do what He can with the municipalities, to inhabit them, and direct
them, and purify them.
4. The Lord never concludes simply within the letter. At, the last
the invariably says something that opens up a distant and ever-receding because
ever-enlarging horizon. He says in this instance, “I will do better unto you
than at your beginnings.” He is able, let us say again with rising
thankfulness, to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. The
Church constantly exclaims, Thou hast kept the good wine until now! We never
can get in advance of God. When we have reaped our most abundant harvest He
says, This is only an earnest of the harvest you shall one day possess; I will
do more for you and better unto you than at your beginnings.
5. Then let us grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Let us he no longer thoughtless; let us no longer limit the Holy One of
Israel, saying, The Lord hath made an end of His revelation, the Lord hath no
more grace to give, no more love to show; He has given us the Cross. Paul says,
If He has freely given us the Cross,--it is not an end, it is a
beginning,--with the Cross He will also freely give us all things. The Lord
cannot be exhausted. His providence is ascending, expanding, deepening. (J.
Parker, D. D.)
Verse 10
Whereas the Lord was there.
Jehovah-Shammah
As Palestine was preserved from the enmity of Mount Seir by the
presence of Jehovah, so the Church, and each separate member of it, is
constantly kept by the power of a present God, despite the rage of adversaries.
I. A despised
people constantly triumphant because “the Lord was there.” The people of God
have always been, in every age, a hated and despised people. This may be seen
if you will notice a few facts.
1. The adversaries of God’s Israel have often thought in their hearts
that they would utterly destroy them. One of the Roman emperors set up a
monument, “In the memory of a destroyed superstition called Christianity.” But
was our holy religion destroyed? Could the dragon prevail against the remnant
which kept the commandment of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ? Behold the
multitudes who this day bow the knees at the name of Jesus of Nazareth. The
Lord being there, immortality, nay, eternity was in the Church. God is eternal,
He is in the Church, and His Church is immortal too.
2. The enemies of the Church have frequently shown their scorn of her
by the ridicule which they have cast upon her attacks. But as the cake of
barley bread fell upon the tent of Midian and smote it that it lay along, even
so the Church is more than conqueror. Sydney Smith said, when Carey talked of
evangelising India, that a consecrated cobbler was going out to preach the
Gospel to educated and enlightened Hindoos, but the consecrated cobbler took
his post and digged in India a well of which thousands shall yet drink. That
man of God has placed the battering-ram of the Gospel in such a position that
ere long the hoary bastions of idolatry will tremble, and the world shall see
that the weakness of God is stronger than man.
3. The world’s estimation of the Church has frequently been seen in
the way in which it will mock at all her teachings. The wise men of this world
have always something far superior to anything that the Bible can reveal. Ah!
we can well endure their boastings, for the doctrines of grace are the loftiest
of all philosophy and the most intellectual of all teachings--because
Jehovah-Shammah, the Lord is in them; and where God is, there is perfect
wisdom; where God is, there is incomprehensible knowledge.
4. Do they not, also, very frequently cast in our teeth our trials?
Nebuchadnezzar can cast in but three, he cannot, however, cast out the fourth;
where the Church shall be, Christ shall walk the coals with His people, and
they shall come out of their trials triumphant, for God is there. Where God is,
there is everlasting love; where God abideth, there is immutable affection; and
therefore let this be our comfort, God is with thee, Israel, passing through
the fire.
5. The world shows its disesteem of us by the way in which it often
treats the Christian. It sees him poor and naked and miserable, and therefore
pushes him about as though he were a beggar and not one of the blood royal. Little
do they know that, however poor the Christian may be, the Lord is there. The
very honour and dignity and majesty of Deity itself guards every follower of
the Saviour, however much he may be despised among men.
II. The man opposed
and yet a conqueror.
1. The early convictions of a newborn soul are always the subject of
Satanic attack. Satan hopes that with the laugh, the jeer, the jest and
merriment he will destroy utterly all convictions of sin; little does he dream
that “the Lord is there,” and where God sends the arrow home, no devil can ever
draw it out.
2. Then, as the fend has tried to destroy conviction, he will next
shoot his arrows against our faith. Poor, feeble follower of Jesus, he will
worry thee. But the faith which God gives to us overcometh the world--yea, and
overcometh the old dragon too.
3. Have not you always found that not only your faith but all your
good works are the subjects of Satan’s attacks? I never yet had a virtue or
possessed a grace but what it was sure to be the target for hellish bullets;
whether it was hope bright and sparkling, or love warm and fervent, or patience
all enduring, or real flaming like coals of fire, the old enemy of everything
that is good has tried if he could destroy or mar it. And why is it that anything
virtuous or lovely survives in you? There can be no reason given to this, but
“God is then.”
4. Note how sedulously Satan aims against the perseverance of God’s
people. They will never hold on their way, saith he. You and I have thought we
never should. And yet you have not fallen from grace yet, not yet have you
disgraced your character, not yet gone back to your old lusts. How is this?
Why, God was in you, and if He had not been there, then indeed had you been a
prey unto your adversaries. A Christian is something like an express train. On
some of our railroads, you know, there are express trains which do not stop to
take water, the water lies in a trench in the middle between the rails, and as
the train runs it sucks up its own supply of cold water, and so continues its
course without a pause. Our God in grace has forestalled our needs, He prepares
supplies for His own people, so that without their stopping to seek the streams
of creature confidence, sometimes without the use of means, He is pleased to speed
them on their pathway towards heaven, fed by a Divine arrangement of grace. Oh,
it is blessed to think that if God be there, everything a Christian can want
for his final persevering, for his eternal life, is ready at hand.
5. I have no doubt, beloved, we shall find that when we come to die,
our dying confidence will be the object of the enmity of all the powers of
hell. Perhaps like John Knox you may have your blackest day at the last, but
oh! thanks be unto God that giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus
Christ, we have no fear for our dying confidence, for “God is there,” even
there where the billows are the most tempestuous and the water is most chill;
we shall feel the bottom and know that it is good, our feet shall stand upon
the rock of ages even in our dying moments.
III. A desolate soul
not destroyed, because God is there. “My purpose is,” says Satan, “that be
shall dwell forever with me, in misery extreme. I have laid hold upon him,”
says he, “and he hath made a league with hell. He is mine, he is mine forever.”
But stop, stop, the Lord was there before the devil. Does the devil purpose?
Ah, but God’s purpose is older than the devil’s purpose. Does the sinner make a
covenant? Ay, but then, God’s covenant was made before that sinner was born,
and what is the devil’s purpose compared with God’s purpose? You see, God is
there before him--“Whereas the Lord was there.” “Ah, but,” said Satan, “he is
mine, I will have him, I will go and take possession, he is mine”; and so he is
about to enter the vineyard, and take possession of the vines of sour grapes,
when lo! someone meets him on the threshold, and says, “What dost thou here?”
“I am come to take possession,” saith he. “Take possession!” saith Christ; “I
have a claim upon this vineyard, I bought it and paid for it with drops of
blood; what dost thou here? Thou sayest, ‘I will possess this land,’ whereas
the Lord was there”: and He shows the fiend the print of the nails, and points
to His wounded side, and says, “Whatever thy claim may be, Mine is a higher
claim; I bought, I paid for, I have the acceptance from the Divine hand, and
this vessel of mercy was Mine, Mine long before thou couldst have any claim
upon it.”
IV. The same, dear
friends, is true with regard to the entire world. The world cannot be
destroyed, because “Jehovah is there.” This world once shone, like its sister
stars, bright and fair, but a sad shadow of eclipse was thrown upon it--it
became swathed in the mists of sin and though the glory of the Lord hath risen
upon it, yet still much of the gloom and the thick darkness continues. Shall
that darkness cover all the nation? Shall the light become dim forever? No, no;
“The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.” Shall
its groans and travails end in nothing? No, no; the day cometh when “The glory
of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the
mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》