Page 171 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

CHAPTER XXXIV. 165

-will yet accomplish for Israel on earth when He has
finished gathering His assembly for heaven. Never
have these words been fulfilled as yet; they therefore
must be. Their certainty and security rest on Himself,
and on that mercy which endures for ever, as they will
soon sing—how joyfully ! In vain do sages reason on
His non-execution of a threat when men, as at Nineveh,
repented: for after all it came, though it be His delight
to hear the cry of those that humble themselves at His
word, and defer the stroke till patience would lose its
character and lapse into indifference at evil which is far
from Him. But He who promises knows how to make
good all circumstances and conditions, even as He has
meanwhile brought in the only righteous basis; as for
past forbearance, so for the future harvest of blessing.
That day of rich goodness and mercy will not be with­
out the judgment of the wicked, but contrariwise. As
we learn in chapter xxxiii. that individual state before
God will have a force in Israel which it never had
under the first covenant, so here it will be when He
judges between sheep and sheep, between the rams and
the he-goats, and calls up the wantonness of those who
destroyed what they could not use to the hurt of the
flock. He will judge the quick no less than the dead.
But there is more still. There might be judgment of
oppression and deliverance of the wretched, and bless­
ing of the people restored to the land of Israel; but
grace does not stay its flow according to the measures
of men. “ Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah unto
them; Behold, I, even I, will judge between the fat
cattle, and between the lean cattle. Because ye have
thrust with side and with shoulder, and pushed all the