Page 211 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

CHAPTER XXXIX. 205
and they shall call it the valley of the multitude of
Gog. And seven months shall the house of Israel be
burying of them, that they may cleanse the land. Yea,
all the people of the land shall bury them; and it shall
be to them a renown the day that I shall be glorified,,
saith the Lord Jehovah. And they shall sever out men
of continual employment, passing through the land to
bury with the passengers those that remain upon the
face of the earth, to cleanse it: after the end of seven
months shall they search. And the passengers that
pass through the land, when any seeth a man’s bone,
then shall he set up a sign by it, till the buriers have
buried it in the valley of Hamon-Gog. And also the
name of the city shall be Hamonah. Thus shall they
cleanse the land.” (Vers. 11—16.)
Did Gog think to take the land for a possession T
Jehovah will give him there a grave; and this in no
obscure spot but in the direct pathway of many passers
by. The idea is not, as our translators fancied, that
people would stop their noses because of the bad smell,
but that the barrows of so many buried men would stay
all who pass that way and lead them to think of the
vengeance poured out on them. The LXX seem here
confused (“ the burial-place of all that approach the
sea”); but there is no countenance given to the notion
already mentioned. No calculation of unbelieving be­
lievers who would evaporate the prediction need em­
barrass the Christian. Has Jehovah spoken and will Ho
not perform ?
The care to purify the land from the sight of a man’s
bone is remarkable, but natural if glory is to dwell
there. People in general if they were but going through