Page 97 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

CHAPTER XX. 91
branches, and she appeared in her height with the mul­
titude of her branches. But she was plucked up in
fury, she was cast down to the ground, and the east
wind dried up her fruit: her strong rods were broken
and withered; the fire consumed them. And now she*
is planted in the wilderness, in a dry and thirsty ground.
And fire is gone out of a rod of her branches, which
bath devoured her fruit, so that she hath no strong rod
to be a sceptre to rule. This is a lamentation, and
shall be for a lamentation.” (Ver. 10—14.) It was
not by weakness the chosen people or their princes
fell; it was not by reason of strength that Egypt
■ or Babylon prevailed. They turned from Jehovah to
sin and must, as they do, serve the basest of the-
Gentiles in sorrow. The sceptre centres in Shiloh, wha
will return in power, as surely as He was crucified in
weakness.

CHAPTER XX.
T he new division opens with a full and solemn exposure*
of Israel's sin, not merely in the light of Jehovah’s
present estimate but of His ways with them in the
past and in the future. Indeed we never adequately ,
judge our actual condition unless we are thus subject to
the mind and purpose of God; for as we must weigh
where He placed us at the first, so He would have us
look onward to His end if we would be wise according
to Him, and thus the better feel how our state answers
to either
M And it came to pass in the seventh year, in the*