Page 62 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

5 G NOTES ON EZEKIEL.

from God, who, however gracious and merciful,
must needs be jealous of Iiis majesty and truth,
thus utterly misrepresented and profaned. What
could be the end for themselves and such as followed
them but destruction ? They were like foxes in the
ruins, full of craft and mischief. No wonder that there
was no going up into the breaches nor making up a
fence round the house of Israel to stand in the battle in
the day of Jehovah; like those who desired at a later
day to make a fair show in the flesh, and constrained
the Gentiles to be circumcised, only lest themselves
should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. Such
persons feared not Jehovah nor had His secret but only
falsehood and divination, seeing that they said “ Jehovah
saith” when they were not sent by Him, and yet they
made men hope for the fulfilment of the word. Hence
the solemn appeal by Ezekiel: “ have ye not seen a
false vision, and have ye not spoken a lying divination ?
and ye say. Jehovah saith, when I have not spoken.”
Then follows the divine denunciation. “ Therefore
thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Because ye have spoken
vanity, and seen lies, therefore, behold, I am against
yon, saith the Lord Jehovah. And mine hand shall be
upon the prophets that see vanity, and that divine lies:
they shall not be in the assembly of my people, neither
shall they be writteh in the writing of the house of
Israel, neither shall they enter into the land of Israel;
and ye shall know that I am the Lord Jehovah.
Because, even because they have seduced my people,
saying, Peace; and there was no peace; and one built
up a wall, and, lo, others daubed it with untempered
mortar: say unto them which daub it with untempered