Page 106 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

100 NOTES ON EZEKIEL.
penalty. “ [As] I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, surely
with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm, and
with fury poured out, will I rule over you.” Is this-
only in the way of judgments? Of judgments with­
out doubt, but with the view and end of purging Israel,
He will have His people separate from the Gentiles,
whatever may seem the natural course of events, and
whatever the desires not only of the Gentiles but of
Israel. In the result, Jehovah only shall be exalted ,
and this when men least expect it. As surely as sum­
mer follows winter in the earth, so light shall succeed
the darkness of man’s day. For this are the ancient
people kept of God spite of themselves and the enemy.
For, let Satan reign as he may, God is above him and
will rule openly as He does in secret providence.
But it is in verse 35 that we see one of the mo­
mentous and distinctive intimations of this new word
of Jehovah. It is not a question of the temple or Je­
rusalem or the last reigning branch of her boughs
out of which fire went and devoured her fruit, so that
there is no more on her a strong branch for a sceptre to
rule, till Shiloh come. Here it is the people as a whole,
Israel at least rather than the Jews; and of the deepest
interest is the intimation of their special future. With
them (not with the remnant in the land and city) will
God rehearse the history of the chosen nation. After
gathering them out from the people and the countries
wherein they are still scattered, and this not by quiet,
moral, or evangelic means, but with a mighty hand and
with an outstretched arm, and with outpoured fury, He
will bring them into the wilderness of the people, and
plead or hold judgment over them face to face, as of old