Page 12 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

6 NOTES ON EZEKIEL.
to shake off the Babylonish yoke, which Zedekiah was
essaying through Egypt. But no: it was Jehovah who
was judging Jerusalem, He who dwelt between the
cherubim though he might employ Nebuchadnezzar.
Morally it could not be otherwise. The doom of the
people, city, temple, king, and people are all shewn in
this first half. The second opens with a kind of
parenthetic transition in which he denounces seven
objects of judgments among the nations surrounding
or near the land, neglecting the time when these bur­
dens were delivered, and grouping them in moral
unity (chaps, xxv.—xxxii.) ; after which the prophet
recurs distinctly to Israel, opens the individual ground
on which God henceforth would deal with them
(chap, xxxiii.), denounces first the guilty shepherds or
princes (chap, xxxiv.) and then the hatred of mount
Seir (chap, xxxv.), next pledges first the moral (chap,
xxxvi.) and then the corporate (chap, xxxvii.) restora­
tion of all Israel, the overthrow of Gog and all his
hosts (chaps, xxxviii., xxxix.), and finally the return
of the glory of God, with the re-established sanctuary,
ritual, and priesthood in the land, now indeed holy, as
well as the re-arrangement of the twelve-tribed nation­
ality under the prince; for the name of the city from
that day shall be Jehovah-shammah. (Chaps, xl.—
xlviii.) Whether in judgment or in peaceful blessing,
it is the day of Jehovah for the earth, not at all the
foreshewn blessedness of Christianity as the allegorists
teach. Such doctrine, whether patristic or puritan, is
misleading and a delusion. These extremes meet in
the common error which robs Christ and the church
of that answer to His heavenly glory which it is the