Page 197 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 191
Who can affirm that this is true now, either of Israel,
of whom it is said, or of the church, of whom it
is not?

CHAPTER XXXVIII.
N e x t follow two chapters which contain a prediction of
God’s judgment to fall in the last days, when Israel is
restored, on a great north-eastern chief with his vast
array of satellites and allies on the mountains of the
Holy Land.
But it may be well to clear away some mistakes
which have long, and for most readers, overhung the
translation of verse 2 to the detriment of the sense.
Happily the oldest version (the Septuagint) gives the
with the Gentiles; the disorder of war with the spiritual opposi­
tion of vice to virtue; the temple, evidently temporal as it is,
with the salvation of souls, the religion they profess, &c.
u The prophet Ezekiel completely destroys all these chimerical
opinions. The true Israelites, he says, will be redeemed—the real
seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and not the Gentiles. He does
cot say that the land which they will re-possess will be the church
or heaven, but that same land which they had inhabited before
they were scattered, and wherein they will dwell for ever. The
Lord commands him to take two sticks; on the one to write the
name of Judah and his companions; and on the other the name
of Ephraim, son of Joseph, and all the house of Israel; that is to
say, the remnant of the tribes which were divided into two king­
doms after the death of Solomon: and to say to the children of
Israel that at the time of the redemption the kingdoms shall be
united never to be divided again. He was then to shew these two
sticks to the people and say to them, • Thus saith the Lord God,
Behold, I will take the children from among the nations whither
they be gone, and will gather them from every side, and bring them
unto their own land: and I will make them but one nation in the