Page 174 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

1G8 NOTES ON EZEKIEL.

“ And the word of Jehovah came unto me saying,
Son of man, set thy face against mount Seir, and pro­
phesy against it, and say unto it, Thus saith the Lord
Jehovah ; Behold, 0 mount Seir, I am against thee,
and I will stretch out mine hand against thee, and I
will make thee most desolate. I will lay thy cities
waste, and thou shalt be desolate, and thou shalt know
that I am Jehovah. Because thou hast had a per­
petual hatred, and hast shed the blood of the children
of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their
calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end.’’
(Yer. 1—5.)
The denunciation is all the more solemn as standing
out in contrast with the immediately preceding promise
of goodness and mercy to Israel. It was this very
blessing by divine grace to the chosen people which
from the beginning had raised the ever growing ran­
cour of their kinsmen who looked sullenly on their
predicted blessedness from their own heights of proud
self-confidence. Soon were they to prove what it is to
have Jehovah against one, yea, His hand stretched out
to render desolate and waste. And so the issue de_
dared; for the word and the hand of Jehovah were
shortly after manifest in the desolation of their cities
and themselves. Yet I may add, for the warning of
any careless soul who may glance over these pages, that
awful as it was thus to know that He who had so
spoken and wrought is Jehovah, displayed in the chas­
tening of Israel and the judgment of the heathen, in­
comparably more so must be His dealing with every soul
in Christendom who trifles with the name and word of
the Lord now.