Commentary on Ezekiel 1 part 10/19

and by 'fire' he meant now the corrective and purifying word, and now the punishment inflicted through deeds.

And again by 'silversmith' he named the prophetic teaching, and by 'lead' the punishment;

for just as lead is put into silver that is being smelted, so as to consume the base alloy in it, so also punishment is brought upon those who deserve it, that they may be shown pure from sin.

This too he threatens to do here.

'Thus says the Lord Adonai:'

'Because you have all become one mixture, therefore behold, I will gather you into the midst of Jerusalem.'

'As silver and copper, and iron, and lead, and tin are gathered into the midst of a furnace, to blow fire upon it that it may be smelted, so will I gather you in my wrath and in my fury, and I will bring you in and cast you down;'

'And I will smelt you, and I will blow upon you in the fire of my wrath, and you shall be smelted in the midst of it.'

'As silver is smelted in the midst of a furnace, so shall you be smelted in the midst of it, and you shall know that I the Lord have poured out my fury upon you.'

'Since,' he says, 'you have received the admixture of wickedness, and, resembling reprobate silver, have been shown to be base through your manifold depravity, I will make Jerusalem your smelting-crucible, and I will cast in the enemies in the manner of coals;'

'and my energy and will I will set in motion, as it were a bellows, and I will smelt you all together, that those who are incurably diseased I may consume like the other base materials, but those who admit of healing I may bring forth like refined silver.'

And the word of the Lord came to me, saying:

'You are a land that is not rained upon, nor did rain come upon you in the day of wrath.'

'And made desolate by war, and receiving neither rain nor plough;'

and yet he brought the rain of teaching upon her through the holy prophets;

but since they did not receive it but pushed it away, like some rock that gives no entrance to the falling of the rain, he fittingly named her a land not rained upon.

Then again he accuses the rulers.

'...in her midst, like roaring lions, seizing prey, devouring souls by force, taking wealth and honours; they multiplied her widows in her midst.'

For the men being made away with,

it is plain that widowhood found its place;

from there he transfers the accusatory discourse to the priests.

'And her priests set at nought my law.'

This is the greatest lawlessness;

for those who ought to have guided the rest continued in their own blindness.

'And they profaned my holy things.' 'Unlawfully,' he says, 'they performed the sacred services;'

then the forms of the lawlessness:

'Between holy and profane they did not distinguish, and between clean and unclean they did not distinguish.' 'They did not discern,' he says, 'nor teach, what is holy and divine, and what is profane and human;'

for here he calls 'profane' not that which is accursed, but that which is common and set apart from divine things.

'Clean and unclean' — the things separated according to the law, and again those forbidden according to the law, not only concerning foods and sacrifices, but also concerning garments, and the other things that befall both by intention and against intention: emissions of seed, and the menstruant woman, and the touch of leprosy, and the touch of a corpse, and of carrion, and of a beast-torn thing, and all the rest that the law prescribes.

To these he adds: 'And from my sabbaths they hid their eyes, and they profaned me in their midst.' For seeing the day of the sabbaths openly outraged, and unlawful labour carried out on the day of rest, they were unwilling to reprove those who dared to transgress the law, but as if closing their eyes, they pretended not to see what they were in fact continually seeing.

Again returning to the rulers, he says:

'Her rulers in her midst are like wolves seizing prey, to shed blood, to destroy souls, that they may enrich themselves through covetousness.'

'They made unjust slaughters,' he says, 'an occasion of gain, those who were allotted to rule; and those who ought to have been champions of the wronged, these became of the party of the wrongdoers.'

From there he passes on to the prophets, saying:

'And her prophets who daubed them over;'

This he also said above, that the wall badly built by the people was daubed over yet worse by the false prophets;

'they confirmed,' he says, 'those called prophets, the evils done by the rulers, employing flattering words, and having been trained to fawn upon the authorities.'

Then he teaches their punishment:

'They shall fall, seeing vain things, divining lies, saying, Thus says the Lord Adonai — and the Lord has not spoken.' For imitating the true prophets, they clothed their false oracles with the person of God, and attached falsehood to the fountain of truth.

'And these things,' he says, 'they said;'

'Oppressing the people of the land with injustice, and plundering spoils, oppressing the poor and needy, and not dealing with the sojourner according to justice.'

They practiced false prophecy, he says, and prophesied to curry favor with the rulers, wishing to gain license against the poor, and making their lying a means of profit.

And I sought from among them a man who walked uprightly, and who stood in the breach of the wall before my face in the time of the land, that it might not be utterly wiped out; and I found none.

These same things he teaches also through Jeremiah, saying:

Go about through the streets of Jerusalem, and look, and search in her broad places, whether you can find one man doing judgment and seeking faithfulness, and I will be merciful to her. Here too, then, he says that from among the rulers and the priests and all the rest, he sought at least one man able to stand in the breach of the wall—that is, one strong enough through righteousness to hold back the punishments that were being brought upon them, and able to block up and wall off the breach that had been made by their lawlessness, and to stop the inrush of the punishment; and he found none.

I poured out my wrath upon her in the fire of my anger, to make an end of them.

And showing the justice of the punishment, he added:

I have brought their ways upon their own heads, says the Lord Adonai.

For having walked wickedly and lawlessly, he says, they found the end fitting to their own way.

From this it is possible to learn not only the surpassing greatness of the divine goodness, but also the impiety of the Jews.

For in the case of Sodom he promised that, if he found five righteous men, he would keep the whole city untouched by punishment;

but here, having sought one, he found none.

It is fitting, therefore, that we, knowing that the divine mercy is yoked together with judgment—for he says, 'Of mercy and judgment will I sing to you, O Lord'—should not persist in the practices of sin, nor despise the longsuffering of God, nor treasure up for ourselves wrath in the day of wrath and of the revelation and righteous judgment of God, who will render to each according to his works;

to him be the glory unto the ages of ages.

And the word of the Lord came to me, saying:

Son of man, there were two women, daughters of one mother.

And they committed fornication in Egypt.

In the preceding passages he named the whole people as a single harlot;

for at the beginning they were reckoned as one people.

But since in the days of Rehoboam the division took place, and some were called Ephraim and Israel, and the others Judah, he fittingly employs the parabolic and figurative form according to that division;

and he names them from their capital cities: the ten tribes from Samaria, and Judah and Benjamin from Jerusalem.

He calls them daughters of one mother, not only because of the single root of their race, but also because in their impiety they had one mother, Egypt;

for above too he had figuratively called their mother a Hittite, and their father an Amorite.

These, then, he says, committed fornication in Egypt.

Then he also indicates the time:

In their youth they committed fornication.

There their breasts were pressed, and there they were deflowered. For their fathers, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, shone forth in piety, and the sons of Jacob too remained uninitiated in idolatry;

but those born of them learned impiety anew from their sojourn in Egypt.

By their 'youth' he means the beginning of their increase into a multitude;

and by 'corruption' and the 'fall of the breasts' he means the learning of impious doctrines.

For just as the slackening of the breasts follows upon the loss of virginity,

so upon apostasy from God there follows the collapse of the governing faculty within us;

for the breasts are, as it were, coverings and defenses of this faculty.

Then, since he had figuratively named them women, he also assigns to them the names of certain Egyptian women who had become notorious for licentiousness, and he says:

And their names were Oholah the elder, and Oholibah her younger sister.

Having spoken the former things enigmatically, he brought the discourse to a clearer point, and made mention of those harlot women, heightening the accusation, wishing by means of the example to instill in them a perception of their impiety.

Then he recounts the benefit that had come to them from him.

And they became mine, and bore sons and daughters; and their names were: Samaria is Oholah, and Jerusalem is Oholibah. He calls the harmony that had come to them through the Law a joining and a fellowship;

for he laid down the law, and they agreed to keep the legislation;

and the words, 'they bore me sons and daughters,' show that, being under the Law, they for a while brought up their children in piety.

Up to this point, then, he made a common accusation against both;

but from here on, the division of the tribes having taken place, he makes his first accusation against Samaria, whom he named Oholah;

she ran aground upon the impiety of the calves, when the kingdom had been split in two.

And Oholah, he says, committed fornication away from me, and doted upon her lovers.

He has applied the term 'lovers' as though of a woman;

and he hints at and obliquely indicates the demons whom she continued to serve.

Then he also teaches the forms of the impiety.

And the Assyrians, he says, who drew near to her—

(vv. 6, 7) clothed in blue, governors and commanders, all of them choice young men, riding upon horses.

And she bestowed her fornication upon them, upon all the choice sons of the Assyrians whom she doted upon; with all their devisings she defiled herself.

He speaks enigmatically of choice young men clothed in blue, meaning the idols thus painted and fashioned by them;

for all the impious of old were accustomed to invest their own gods with the fashions that prevailed among themselves.

For the Greeks and Romans arm Ares according to the fashion of their own equipment;

the Persians according to their own;

and the Indians in one way and the Ethiopians in another, and likewise each of the nations that are named.

For having summoned Pul—and this man was king of the Assyrians—to their aid against the Syrians, they promised to bring him tribute and tax;

and from this the intermingling thereafter introduced the impiety.

And she did not forsake her fornication that came from Egypt, for they lay with her in her youth, and they too deflowered her, and poured out their fornication upon her.

Having been joined, he says, to the Assyrians, and having wiped off upon herself their superstition, she yet did not neglect the Egyptian teachings either, but continued to keep even those with the utmost diligence.

Having thus described the forms of the impiety, he also points out the justice of the punishment.

For since she would not endure my laws, but though devoted to me lusted after others, I stripped her of my providence, and gave her over to those whose fellowship she had preferred to mine.

They themselves, he says, uncovered her shame; they took away her sons and daughters, and slew her with the sword, and she became a byword among women, and they executed judgments upon her against her daughters.

Thus, he says, being set forth by me for trial, she learned by experience what my fellowship is, and what the wickedness of her lovers is.

For straightway, having taken her captive, they first exposed her fornication by way of punishment, and then most savagely and pitilessly cut her down;

and her sons and daughters they led away as spear-won captives, and every city babbles of what befell her.

For again by 'women' he figuratively named the cities.

And not only against her herself did they show this savagery,

but also against her daughters;

and by these he means the subject cities and villages.

These things the ten tribes endured;

first under Tiglath-pileser.

And thereafter by Shalmaneser.

These were kings of the Assyrians.

Having thus recounted what befell Samaria, he transfers his discourse to Jerusalem, and says:

And her sister Oholibah saw it, and corrupted her inordinate desire beyond her (Aquila rendered 'inordinate desire' as 'longing'), and multiplied her whoredom above the whoredom of her sister.

She doted upon the sons of the Assyrians, rulers and captains her neighbours, clothed in fine bordered garments, horsemen riding upon horses, all of them chosen young men.

These same things, he says, did Jerusalem also do just as Samaria.

And likewise, trampling upon her covenants with me, she gave preference to the gods of the Syrians.

For, having put her confidence in an alliance with these, she despised my aid.

And I saw, he says, that the way of the two was one and the same, defiled.

Alike, he says, and matching one another were their practices.

She increased her whoredom, and saw men portrayed upon the wall, images of the Chaldeans portrayed in colours with a graving tool,

the appearance of them all threefold, like the sons of Babylon of the Chaldeans, the land of their fatherland.

And she doted upon them at the sight of her eyes.

Rightly and most fittingly did he ridicule the impotence of the idols, teaching that they are nothing else than colours and shapes and the products of art.

And the phrase 'the appearance of them all threefold' signifies their manifold forms.

But Symmachus rendered it 'the appearance of all of them as spoilers.'

Beholding these, he says, and seeing nothing else than the semblances of the painter's art, she fell in love with intercourse with them.

Everywhere he hints at idolatry.

And she sent, he says, messengers to them into the land of the Chaldeans.

And the sons of Babylon came to her into the bed of lodgers, and defiled her in their whoredom;

and she was defiled by them, and her soul was estranged from them.

For she, he says, having summoned them for aid, and having received impiety through her intermingling with them, again withdrew from them;

and by 'withdrawal' here he does not mean withdrawal from the demons, but from the Babylonians themselves;

for indeed Jehoiakim and Jeconiah and Zedekiah transgressed the covenants which they had made with the Babylonians.

And she uncovered her whoredom, and uncovered her shame, and my soul was estranged

from her, in the same manner as my soul was estranged from her sister.

Beholding, he says, the excess of her impiety, I stripped her of my providential care;

for again, according to the manner of the allegory, he has employed the word 'soul';

not because the Deity is divided into soul and body;

for it is incorporeal and uncompounded;

but he conducts the discourse after a human fashion and in ways familiar to men, condescending to the weakness of mankind.

Up to this point, then, he seemed to be addressing his words to the prophet;

but from here onward, as though coming to remembrance through the narration of the things she had dared to do, he transfers the discourse to her.

And you multiplied, he says, your whoredom, so as to call to remembrance the days of your youth, in which you played the harlot in Egypt.

I had consigned to oblivion, he says, your transgressions in Egypt;

but you have caused the memory of these to bloom again through your latter practices.

For the sameness of lawlessness is often wont to recall former sins.

Then again, allegorically and figuratively, he makes his accusation of idolatry.

And you doted upon the Chaldeans, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose members are the members of horses.

And you visited again the iniquity of your youth, the things which you did in Egypt in your lodging, where the breasts of your youth fell.

And mingling with the Chaldeans, he says, you did not even neglect the Egyptian practices;

but you served both the gods of these and the gods of those.

And their great godlessness and polytheism he likened to the members of horses and asses;

since he calls idolatry 'whoredom' as well;

for the souls that have been joined and dedicated to God, then forsaking him and embracing the company of demons, are fittingly styled adulteresses.

Behold, I will raise up your lovers against you, those from whom your soul was estranged, and I will bring them against you round about:

the sons of Babylon, and all the Chaldeans, Pekod and Shoa and Koa, and all the sons of the Assyrians with them, chosen young men, rulers and captains,

all of them officers and men of renown, riding upon horses.

And they shall all come against you from the north with weapons and chariots and wheels and a multitude of peoples;

and they shall set breastplates and shields and helmets against you round about, and they shall set a watch against you on every side.

For I indeed, being despised by you, continued in longsuffering;

but they, on learning at once of your defection, will arrive with every kind of full armour, employing horses and chariots, and bringing all their subjects with them, and will wall off your entrances with siege-works.

For this is what he signified when he said:

They shall set a watch against you round about. Then he adds:

And I will set judgement before their face, and they shall judge you with their own judgements.

(v. 25) And I will set my jealousy against you, and they shall deal with you in the fury of my wrath.

For since you preferred them to my provident care, through those very ones I will exact from you the penalties for your lawlessness against me, and I will hand you over to their instruments of punishment.

They shall take away your nose and your ears, and shall cut down your remnant with the sword;

they themselves shall take your sons and your daughters, and fire shall devour your remnant.

(v. 26) And they shall strip you of your clothing, and take the articles of your boasting.

For some, he says, they shall carry off as prisoners of war, others they shall strike down with javelins in the battle-line, and others they shall mutilate, using harshness and cruelty;

and all that belongs to you they shall plunder, and most of your possessions they shall give over to the fire.

And I will turn away your impieties from you, and your whoredom from the land of Egypt you shall no longer remember.

For coming into those evils, you shall come to a perception of your own lawlessness, and shall utterly abhor those things which became to you the occasion of this calamity.

Behold, I deliver you into the hands of those whom you hate, from whom your soul was estranged.

And they shall deal with you in hatred, and shall take all your labours and your toils, and you shall be naked and put to shame;

and the shame of your whoredom and of your impiety shall be uncovered.

Having fallen in love with the Chaldeans, he says, you again came to hate them; but I will hand you over to these very ones, and through them I will exact from you the penalties of retribution, and through the retribution I will expose all your impiety naked;

for those who behold your calamities shall learn that your own lawlessness was the cause of them.

These things were done to you when you went forth after the nations, and were defiled by their imaginations.

You followed, He says, the practices of the nations, which, using their own reasonings, devised impiety.

And not only, He says, did you imitate the impiety of the other nations, but also:

'You have walked in the way of your sister, and I will put her cup into your hands.'

What Samaria has suffered, He says, this also you shall undergo.

For He called the punishment a 'cup,' since it produces stupor and drunkenness in those who drink it.

'Thus says Adonai the Lord: You shall drink your sister's cup, deep and wide, and it shall be for laughter and for derision, filled to overflowing.'

'To complete drunkenness, and you shall be filled with faintness, a cup of desolation and destruction, the cup of your sister Samaria.'

'And you shall drink it, and shall drain it dry, and you shall gnaw its shards, and shall tear off your breasts.'

He called the cup 'deep' because of the magnitude of the calamity;

and 'wide' because of the span of the seventy years;

and He named it a cup 'of destruction' because of the desolation that came upon the city;

and He added 'you shall drain it dry,' since she endured the siege to the very last; and He said that she would 'gnaw its shards' because she would fall into the uttermost evils;

and 'tear off her breasts' because of the repentance that arose out of her calamities.

'And I will turn away your feasts, He says, and your new moons, because I have spoken, says Adonai the Lord. I will quench your every festal assembly and all your merriment, and I will put an end to your affairs.'

Since you preferred the pleasures of the body to My service, receive, He says, the wages of your licentiousness.

And by these things it is shown that lawlessness became, as it were, the foundation of impiety;

for being enslaved to pleasures, they rolled down into the worship of idols.

'And the Lord said to me: Son of man, will you judge Oholah and Oholibah, and declare to them their lawless deeds? For they committed adultery, and blood is on their hands, and with their idols they committed adultery, and their children, whom they bore to Me, they made pass over to them through the fire.'

The phrase 'will you judge?' the other translators rendered as 'be judged';

that is, He says: taking upon yourself My person, O prophet, render judgment against Samaria and Jerusalem, and expose their transgressions—how, forsaking Me, they consorted with idols;

and how the children given to them by Me they offered as sacrifice to those idols, despising My laws and profaning My Sabbaths.

'Even to this extent did they act toward Me: they defiled My holy things on that day, and profaned My Sabbaths.'

Then He teaches the manner of the profanation.

'And when they slaughtered their children to their idols, they also entered into My holy places on that day to profane them.'

Great indeed was the excess of their impiety.

For first, their slaughtering of the children was the utmost limit of impiety;

and to offer such victims to the demons was, again, an intensification of the evil;

and to dare these things on the Sabbath, on which even necessary labor was forbidden, shows the impiety to be far greater;

'And behold, thus they did in the midst of My house.' This impiety, He says, they dared to commit in the consecrated house.

'And they sent to the men who came from afar,'

to whom they dispatched messengers; and as soon as these came, at once you washed yourself, and painted your eyes with kohl, and adorned yourself with adornment.

'And you sat upon a spread couch, with a table set before her.'

All that has been said He depicted as of a harlot woman;

but it signifies the alliance they made with the Assyrians and Chaldeans, and the impiety brought in from that source.

It also alludes to the beautifications at the feasts of the demons, the luxuries, the changes of garments, and all the other things which they were accustomed to do at such festivals.

And this is signified also by what follows:

'And My incense and My oil you set before them.'

'And they rejoiced in them.'

For the joy of the demons is the destruction of men.

'And they struck up a sound of harmony toward men coming from a multitude of people, drunk from the wilderness.' For what is more desolate than those who worship idols? From those desolate souls, He says, you received the teachings of impiety, and you welcomed them amid musical instruments sounding forth their sweet strains.

'And you put bracelets on their hands, and a crown of boasting on their heads.' For those who choose to serve the idols receive nothing from them, but rather offer to them the God-given gifts, decking them out with every kind of ornament.

'And I said, Do they not commit adultery with these, and are not these the works of a harlot, and has she herself played the harlot?' For I said, He says, employing the prophets as instruments, that your adultery is dared with lifeless things, and that such practices of yours are harlotries.

'And they went in to her, as men go in to a harlot woman; so they went in to Oholah and to Oholibah, the lawless women, to work lawlessness.'

For thereafter, having taken license from the transgression of these women, as toward harlots exposed to all, so they came in to Samaria and Jerusalem—both the demons, tormentors of souls, and the Chaldeans who had been taught the worship of these idols.

He addresses His word to these, and says:

He set down 'righteous men' not as bearing witness to any righteousness in them;

for they were most unjust and most lawless, and exceedingly impious;

but by comparison with her impieties He set down 'righteous men,' meaning: measured against you, they are righteous.

This He also did earlier, when addressing Jerusalem;

for He said, 'And you justified your sisters in your sins, and in all your lawless deeds which you did.' And here too He says, 'These men are righteous,' that is, more than you.

'And they shall avenge them with the vengeance of adulteresses, and with the judgment of women who shed blood, because they are adulteresses, and blood is on their hands.' They shall pay the penalties, He says, for bloodshed and adultery, taking their own lovers as judges, and they shall suffer the very things that adulterous and murderous women suffer;

having thus completed the enigmatic narrative, He pronounces the verdict against them.

'Thus says Adonai the Lord:'

'Bring up against them multitudes, and give them over to tumult and to plunder.'

'And let them be stoned with the stones of throngs, and let them be run through with their swords;'

'their sons and daughters they shall slay, and their houses they shall burn with fire.'

Then He shows the benefit that will come from this.

'And I will turn away impiety from the land, and all the women shall be instructed, and shall not do according to their impieties.'

For when these women endure such things, He says, and are given over to stones, and swords, and fire, every city shall reap benefit, learning what are the wages of impiety.

Here again He named the cities 'women.'

'And your impiety shall be laid upon you, and you shall bear all the sins of your desires, and you shall know that I am the Lord.'

The fruits of your impiety, He says, you shall reap;

for you did not receive it out of necessity, but by choice and by desire;

and from the punishment you shall gather the greatest benefit—the recognition of My lordship.