Page 218 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

212 NOTES ON EZEKIEL.
it but ingenious accommodation. There is no real ex­
position : what is in their remarks can scarcely have
satisfied even their own minds. As one of the most
learned of the commentators that follow them says in
respect of part, so we may say of all, “ How it is to be
understood, nobody explains, nor dare I conjecture.’’
Yet this man, Cornelius a Lapide, was not to be de­
spised, but rather to be admired, because of the honest
confession of their failure and his own. The whole of the
allegorizing interpreters go on an evidently false track.
It would be strange, if a symbolic vision of Christianity
were to leave out the day of atonement, the feast of
m ccks, and the action of the high priest in the presence
of God—its most essential features in type !
Scarcely better is the very large class of divines who
have striven hard to appropriate the vision to the Jews
who returned from the Babylonish captivity, for the
facts then realized stand immeasurably below this pro­
phetic pledge. The inevitable result therefore of such
applications as of this and the preceding schools is to
lower the character of the divine word.* For to speak
plainly there is more contrast than analogy between the
glowing promises of the prophet and the very small in­
stalment that was paid under Zerubbabel as recorded in
Ezra and Nehemiah. It is not only then that both
these interpretations fail to meet the prophecy, but that
they do not fail to depreciate scripture itself. For ii
* Listen to the words of one who did not always seem an enemy
— “ All the fulfilment is past, and nothing more is expected. The
Jews returned to their country and rebuilt their temple. If their
restoration took place in a different manner from what the prophet
projected [for G od Is in none of these thoughts!, and the circum­
stances attending it were a poo? counterpart of his imaginings, if