Page 220 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

214 NOTES ON EZEKIEL.
signed to them ? We know that not one of these things
applies to the post-captivity interval.
No doubt it was the restoration of the material tem­
ple then in ruins that the prophet had in his eye, and a,
restoration not only of its worship but of the nation in
full under the richest theocratic (and not only spiritual)
privileges. No doubt a just and true interpretation su­
persedes all necessity of confounding the Christian and
the church with the hopes of Israel; but no view is less
satisfactory than that which points to the five centuries
which preceded Christ, and denies a literal fulfilment in
the future for Israel in their land. It is an unfounded
assumption that a single feature in these visions was
fulfilled by a single fact among the returned captives
in their past history. Less than fifty thousand men,
women, and children came up from Babylon: a little
remnant of a remnant, and in no sense those twelve
tribes, whom the prophet sees to take up their allotted
portions in the land—seven in the north, five in the
south, extending beyond the ancient bounds of Pales­
tine, with Jerusalem between.
Indeed there never was the very smallest semblance
of the holy oblation any more than of the allotments of
the land from east to west here predicted. It is ridi­
culous to say that there is no valid objection against
such an interpretation because in many points the city,,
temple, services, &c., did not accord with the prophecy.
The fact is that those who returned from Babylon fell
back on the order as existing before the captivity, and
in no respect made good the peculiar condition pre­
dicted by Ezekiel. Thus no one appeared answering to
the prince, while the high priest was as before a notable