Page 89 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

CHAPTER XVII. 83
fore in every point of view made it impossible for God
to shield the guilty king and people more; and the less
because they bore His name. u You only have I known
of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish
you for all your iniquities.” Judgment must begin at
the house of God; for there they say they see, and
^therefore their sin remains. God will be sanctified in
;all that cbme nigh Him; and if sin be always sin, it is
least excusable where His word is known and His
name held up before men. Justly therefore was Zede-
kiah to be taken in the net of divine retribution, and to
die disappointed in the help he trusted to have from
Pharaoh and his great army in the hour of his greatest
straits. His prisoner in Babylon, whose covenant he had
broken!—so bitterly was Jehovah’s oath recompensed on
Iris own head, when He pleaded with him for his tres­
pass, and slew his fugitives, and scattered to every quarter
those who remained, and thus proved the reality of His
►own outraged name.
But the chapter does not close without a far different
prospect. “ Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, I will also
take of the highest branch of the high cedar, and will
set it; I will crop off from the top of his young twigs
a tender one, and will plant it upon an high mountain
and eminent: in the mountain of the height of Israel
will I plant i t : and it shall bring forth boughs, and
bear fruit, and be a goodly cedar: and under it shall
dwell all fowl of every wing; in the shadow of the
branches thereof shall they dwell. And all the trees of
the field shall know that I Jehovah have brought
down the high tree, have exalted the low tree, have
dried up the green tree, and have made the dry tree to