Page 103 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

CHAPTER XX, 97
Some have found difficulty in verse 25, and this from
time immemorial amongst writers on the Bible as well
as readers of it. Bat the solution is due to the simple
principle that God in His government chastens His
guilty people retributively and calls the scourges His
own, even when the instruments may be wholly foreign to
His mind and heart. Nay it is true even of the Holy
One of God, of Christ Himself, who, when given up
to utter rejection and suffering from man, is in this said
to be smitten of God. (Psalm lxix.; Zechariah xiii.) It
is a great and serious mistake that the statutes which
were not good, and ordinances by which they could not
live, mean God’s own in which they were hound to
walk obediently. This would be indeed to make scrip­
ture hopelessly obscure, and God the author of evil.
Not so: whatever be the issue for the sinner, the apostle
is most energetic, in proving the misery even of a con­
verted soul in his efforts after good and against his
own evil under law, to vindicate that which in itself is
holy, just and good. Assuredly then the Jewish pro­
phet and St. Paul do not contradict each other, but
those who apply the expression a statutes that were not
good” misunderstand the matter in hand. The true
reference fe to the bitter bondage of His people to the
corrupt and destructive regulations of the heathen, even
to the demoralization of their households, and the most
cruel devotion of their first-born to Moloch, “ horrid
king.” Thus, if they polluted God’s name and sabbaths,
He polluted them in their gifts: so great was the de­
gradation of Israel in departing from the true God.
Verse 26 leaves no doubt on my mind as to the real
force of verse 25. “ Therefore, son of man, speak unto
H