Page 15 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

CHAPTEE I.

T h e circumstances in which Ezekiel was called to
prophesy were new and strange. It was not in Judah
nor in Israel, but among the captives by the river
Chebar. Hence Jehovah was pleased to accompany
His word to him with peculiarly vivid marks. To
him only in the Old Testament is it said that the
heavens were opened, and he saw visions of God.
(Yer. 1.) But the opening of the heavens was in
judgment of Israel’s iniquity, not yet to express the
Father’s delight in the Son of God on earth, still less
for the Christian to behold the Son of man in heaven.
Nor is the fifth year of king Jehoiachin’s captivity
without special reason. There had been ample space
for those left behind in the land to repent of their
vain hopes as well as of their rebelliousness and their
idolatry. They had had the warning of their brethren
removed from the land: had they laid it to heart ?
Zedekiah “ did that which was evil in the sight of
Jehovah his God, and humbled not himself before
Jeremiah the prophet speaking from the mouth of
Jehovah. And he also rebelled against king Ne­
buchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God; but
he stiffened his neck, and hardened his heart from
turning unto the Jehovah God of Israel. Moreover
all the chief of the priests, and the people, trans­
gressed very much, after all the abominations of the
heathen; and polluted the house of Jehovah which he
had hallowed in Jerusalem. And the Jehovah God of