Page 64 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

58 NOTES ON EZEKIEL,

Their names should be blotted out as having forfeited'
their rights, a public dealing on the earth and not a
question of eternal judgment, though it is equally clear
that their portion then will be everlasting destruction.
To make it a deprivation of church membership here and
of communion of saints in heaven is to lose all just sense
of the passage. Further, the character of sin is remem­
bered in the punishment. Did the false prophets soothe
the national feeling of the Jews by promising a speedy
return from exile ? They themselves should never see
the land from which they were, or were to be, expelled
by the foe: and they should thus learn who and what
was their Jehovah God with whose name they had
trifled. He will not have His people led away to their
ruin with impunity to the seducers, least of all hear the
holy name of peace perverted to selfish mischief; as
when a wall of defence is built, but only daubed with
mortar that will not hold. What is it but a sham?
It shall fall, is the word to builders. “ An over­
flowing shower cometh, and ye, 0 great hailstones, shall
fall, and a storm of wind shall rend.” So the prophets
elsewhere set forth the future and last troubles of
Israel, as in Psalm Ixxxiii., Isaiah xxviii., xxix., Ezek.
xxxviii. 22, Revelation viii., xvi. To such a judgment
Jehovah pledges Himself, so that every refuge of lies
shall be rased and the misleaders and misled be de­
stroyed with the awful conviction that it is God who is
thus judging the false prophets and their vision of
peaceless peace.
And not men only, but women too took their sad
part in the moral havoc of Israel. Therefore the word
of Jehovah: Likewise, thou son of man, set thy