Commentary on Ezekiel 1 part 15/19

If, He says, I pronounce sentence of death upon someone, and you do not make known to him the verdict brought against him, that through repentance he might annul that sentence, he indeed shall meet an end worthy of his life, but from you I will exact account for his destruction.

But if, He says, you make plain all that comes from Me to the one who lives lawlessly, and yet he despise your words and persist in his own wickedness, he indeed shall undergo the just punishment, but you shall free yourself from the account.

And you, son of man, say to the house of Israel:

Thus you have spoken, saying:

Our transgressions and our iniquities are upon us, and in them we pine away; how then shall we live? While I, He says, am contriving all things for the salvation of Israel, and am unwilling to give them up, they themselves resort to words of despair, and reckon salvation through repentance to be impossible, saying that they are burdened with a most grievous load of sins, and that even to this very day they persist in error and lawlessness.

And they consider it impossible that those so disposed should attain salvation through repentance.

As I live, says the Lord Adonai, I desire not the death of the sinner, but rather that he should turn back from his way and live.

With turning turn back from your evil way; and why will you die, O house of Israel? The doubling is an idiom of the Hebrew tongue, and it signifies the genuineness of the conversion.

And you, son of man, speak to the children of your people:

Wishing to persuade them that He accepts the repentance of the sinner, He demonstrates this from the contrary case.

For just as, He says, if one who has lived in virtue should forsake this way and choose instead the way of wickedness, of necessity he shall find an end worthy of that way;

so likewise, if one reared in lawlessness should be willing to return to the way of virtue, he shall be wholly delivered from the punishment set apart for the lawless.

When I say to the righteous man that he shall surely live, and he trusts in his own righteousness and commits iniquity, all his righteous deeds shall not be remembered; in his unrighteousness which he has done, in it he shall die.

And when I say to the ungodly:

You shall surely die by death; and he turns back from his iniquity, and does judgment and righteousness;

and if he restore the pledge of the debtor, and pay back what he plundered, and the lawless man walk in the ordinances of life so as to do no unjust thing, he shall surely live, and shall not die.

Neither, He says, shall the promise of good things coming from Me profit the righteous man, unless he persevere in the doing of good, but he shall pay penalties worthy of his life;

nor shall the sentence of punishment harm the sinner who is willing to use the remedies of repentance, who frees himself from all unrighteousness, who shows kindness toward his neighbour, and who once and for all chooses to keep the things declared by Me;

for by his change he shall annul the sentence, and shall enjoy life.

And that which is most desirable of all (v. 10):

All his sins, He says, which he has sinned, shall not be remembered against him, because he has done judgment and righteousness; in them he shall live.

Having thus displayed His own goodness, He convicts the ingratitude of the people.

(v. 17) And the children of your people say:

The way of the Lord is not straight; whereas it is this way of theirs that is not straight.

Though so great a goodness and lovingkindness is set before them from Me, He says, they dare to slander My dispensations as not being right.

...them from the facts, that all My things are both right and just, while their own are perverted.

Then He states the same thing more clearly by way of question:

Hear now, O house of Israel:

Is My way not straight? Are not your ways the ones that are not straight? Then He takes up again what has been said, and declares that the righteous man who chooses wickedness shall be punished, and the sinner who returns to righteousness shall obtain salvation;

but to you, He says, this did not appear just.

And this is what you said:

I will judge each one of you according to your ways, O house of Israel. And this is sufficient to persuade even those exceedingly adamantine to love the turning away from wickedness.

And it came to pass in the twelfth year, in the tenth month, on the fifth of the month of our captivity, that one who had escaped came to me from Jerusalem, saying:

And the hand of the Lord had come upon me in the evening, before the one who had escaped came, and He opened my mouth until he came to me in the morning; and my mouth being opened was no longer held shut.

The Syriac reads, 'In the eleventh year and the twelfth month,' and this is more in keeping with the sequence;

for it was in the eleventh year that the city was taken.

And when at dawn that man appeared and brought the tidings, He no longer allowed me to hold back the prophetic words in silence, but commanded and enabled me to deliver them unceasingly.

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

Son of man, those who inhabit these desolate places upon the land of Israel keep saying:

Abraham was but one, and he took possession of the land; and we are many, to us the land is given for a possession.

They are diseased with an excess of insensibility;

for after such great and grievous punishments, they still grow bold, and beholding the desolation of Judaea they dare to say:

If Abraham, being alone, took possession of this land, much more shall we, being many, be masters of it.

But they ought to have considered both the virtue of Abraham and their own wickedness, and not to have trusted in numbers, but to have sought after righteousness.

Thus says the Lord Adonai:

Since you eat with the blood, and lift up your eyes to your idols, and shed blood — shall you then inherit the land? You have stood upon your sword, you have committed abominations, and each of you has defiled the wife of his neighbour — and shall you inherit the land? Trusting, He says, in your own works, you hope to gain possession of the ancestral land;

and yet your life is lawless, for you do the things forbidden by the law;

for you eat blood, which even in giving laws to Noah I forbade, and through Moses I commanded that it be poured out upon the ground;

and the service of idols you hold in high esteem, while you continue in murders and adulteries.

Daring such things, therefore, do not hope to inherit the land.

Thus says the Lord Adonai:

As I live, surely those who are in the desolate places shall fall by the sword, and those who are upon the face of the field I will give to the beasts of the field to be devoured, and those in the fortified places and those in the caves I will slay by pestilence.

And I will make the land a desolation.

The seal of what has been said is, 'As I live';

He says that both those who dwell in the fortified cities, and those in the caves, and those in the desolate places, shall pay the aforesaid penalties.

And showing the cause, He adds:

And the pride of her strength shall perish, and the mountains of Israel shall be made desolate, so that none shall pass through.

(v. 29) And they shall know that I am the Lord;

and I will make their land a desolation, and it shall be made desolate because of all their abominations which they have committed.

And you, son of man, the children of your people speak concerning you beside the walls and in the gateways of the houses, and they speak each one to his neighbour, and each one to his brother, saying:

Come, let us gather together, and hear what is the word that goes forth from the Lord.

And they come to you, as a people comes together, and my people sits before you, and they hear your words, yet they will not do them.

Now all the foregoing words were spoken concerning those in Judea;

but these are concerning the captives already carried off and dwelling in Babylon, who indeed wished to hear the prophetic oracles, but would no longer obey what was said. Rather, in their own assemblies they kept exhorting one another to run to the prophet and learn what had been declared by God, yet they persisted in contradicting it.

Therefore he says: And they will not do them.

For a lie is in their mouth. Their heart, he says, does not agree with their tongue.

For after their defilements their heart goes. For it is for mere pleasure, and not for profit, that they listen to the word.

And you become to them as the sound of a sweet-voiced, well-tuned harp.

Just as, he says, those who hear an instrument producing a harmonious sound reap delight from it, but not thereby also the learning of its notes;

so also your words, O prophet, delight only their hearing, but do not soothe the soul that lives in company with wickedness.

And they will hear your words, and will not do them, because a lie is in their mouth. But now, he says, though they do not believe, when they see the outcome, through experience they will believe.

For when, he says, these things come to pass, they will say:

Behold, it has come, and they will know that a prophet was in their midst.

For in the things they now disbelieve, through the events they will come to believe, and then they will learn the power of prophecy.

From here he transfers his discourse to the shepherds;

and he calls shepherds not only the kings, but also the priests;

and he accuses them of shamelessness, of negligence, and of the betrayal of the sheep.

For, he says, Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel;

prophesy, and say to the shepherds:

Thus says the Lord Adonai:

O shepherds of Israel, do the shepherds feed themselves? Do not the shepherds feed the sheep? Tell me, he says, you yourselves: what is proper to a shepherd — to feed himself, or to pasture the sheep? (3)

Behold, you devour the milk, and clothe yourselves with the wool, and slaughter the fatling, but my sheep you did not pasture.

For you priests reaped the firstfruits, the tithes, and the offerings of the sacrifices;

while you kings, taking the tribute and the tax, were not content with these, but even slaughtering the wealthy, you reaped their riches;

and neither your priests nor you yourselves took care for the tending of the sheep.

Then he recounts their absurdity part by part.

The weakened you did not strengthen, and the sick you did not heal, and the broken you did not bind up, and the ailing you did not restore to health, and the straying you did not turn back, and the lost you did not seek out — and, what is most grievous of all, the strong you wore down with toil, and with force you disciplined them, and with mockery.

For not only did you fail to bring the fitting care to the weak, but you even laid many toils upon the healthy.

And this is easy to perceive from the histories.

... against them, ridiculing what was spoken by them.

And with force you disciplined them, and with mockery — showing that at the very same time they brought grievous things upon the holy ones, while they themselves regarded what was being done as sport and as a game.

Again he called them 'beasts' figuratively, since by the same manner of speech he had also called them 'sheep'.

And by 'beasts' he means, in the spiritual sense, the demons, the tormentors of souls; and in the sensible sense, the enemies who came against them from every side.

And my sheep were scattered and went astray upon every mountain, and upon every high hill; and upon the face of all the earth my sheep were scattered, and there was none to seek them out, nor to turn them back.

By mountains and hills and the other things he mentioned, he named the idol-worship that took place upon them;

for upon mountains and hillocks, and in every place, they set up the precincts of the idols, while neither kings nor indeed priests hindered the impiety.

And there was none to seek them out, nor to turn them back. Having thus made his accusation, he threatens the shepherds with punishment, and says:

Since through your ease and negligence my sheep have become prey to wild beasts, and enjoyed no care or forethought from you;

for you took thought only for your own luxury and bodily indulgence;

For this cause, O shepherds, hear the word of the Lord.

Thus says the Lord Adonai:

Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hands, and I will make them cease from feeding my sheep, and the shepherds shall no longer feed them;

and I will deliver my sheep out of their mouth, and they shall no longer be food for them.

For I will set free, he says, my sheep from these men's evil oversight, who never once deemed them worthy of any forethought, but continued only devouring them.

Then, through our Lord and Savior, he promises salvation.

Behold, I will seek out my sheep, and will visit them.

As a shepherd visits his flock in the day when there is gloom and cloud in the midst of his scattered sheep;

so will I seek out my sheep, and rescue them from every place where they were scattered in the day of cloud and gloom.

By 'cloud' and 'gloom' here he named the darkness of ignorance, which was poured out over the whole inhabited world before the incarnation of our God and Savior.

And such is the Church gathered from Jews and from Gentiles.

Then he makes the prophecy twofold.

For that which is apparent fits the Jews alone;

but that which is mystical and hidden fits all men — the more so as what befell the Jews is a type of our own affairs.

For with their recall, and with their release from captivity, there also coincides our own return from the devil to God, and our freedom from that tyrannical slavery.

And I will bring them out from the nations, and gather them from the countries, and bring them into their own land, and I will pasture them upon the mountains of Israel, and in the ravines, and in every dwelling place of the land.

In a good pasture I will feed them.

And indeed the Law is good, and the commandment, according to the Apostle, is holy, and just, and good; yet he promises them another pasture.

And what is this good pasture that surpasses that of the Law? Is it not clear that he hints at the teaching of the divine Gospels, feeding in which God's sheep are nourished and made fat, and enjoy salvation? And making this yet plainer, he says:

Upon the high mountain of Israel, he says, shall be their glory. And indeed he made mention of many mountains, and of ravines, and moreover he makes special mention of a certain high mountain, upon which he foretells the coming glory of those that are pastured.

The mountain of God is a rich mountain, a curdled mountain, a rich mountain. Then to the mountains of Israel, which envied this mountain, he says:

Why do you suppose them curdled mountains? This is the mountain in which God was pleased to dwell;

for indeed the Lord will dwell there forever. In vain, he says, do you envy this mountain, since in it God was pleased to dwell;

for he will do this to the end.

The other translators taught us to understand it thus:

Why do you contend, curdled mountains? And Theodotion:

Why do you go to law concerning this mountain? And Isaiah cries out, and Micah likewise:

It shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the Lord shall be manifest, and the house of the Lord upon the tops of the mountains, and all the nations shall come to it, and so forth;

and the Lord in the sacred Gospels:

A city, he says, set on a mountain cannot be hidden. So then, here also he named the high and conspicuous mountain of the evangelical teaching, upon which he promised that the glory of the sheep would come to pass.

And their folds shall be there. And this, too, fits us directly, but not the Jews;

for they had but one fold, the Temple in Jerusalem;

But we, churches more numerous than can be counted, spread throughout the whole inhabited world.

'And they shall lie down and rest there, and shall be pastured in a good delight and in a rich pasture upon the mountains of Israel.'

(v. 15) 'And I myself will shepherd my sheep.'

By 'a good delight' and 'rich pasture' he designates the divine oracles;

for Scripture says, 'Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will grant you the requests of your heart.'

And by 'the mountains of Israel' he means the prophetic books, upon which again we feed, having through them a kind of ascent toward the greatest mountain;

for through the prophetic pronouncements we are led on to the evangelical teaching, which is witnessed to by those very prophets.

'I am the good shepherd.' This too he foretold here when he said:

'And I myself will shepherd my sheep.'

'And I will give them rest, and they shall know that I am the Lord.' For being shepherded by him, and resting as it were upon some green pasture in his teaching, we come to recognize his lordship.

'Thus says the Lord Adonai:'

'I will seek out that which is lost, and turn back that which has strayed;'

as with Paul and those like him;

'And that which is broken I will bind up;' as with the tax collector, the harlot, the robber, and those like them;

'And that which has grown weak I will strengthen;' as with Peter after his denial;

'And the fat and the strong I will guard;' as with the holy apostles and those who chose a life like theirs;

'And I will shepherd them with judgment;' supplying good things, and disciplining when it is needful.

Having thus brought to a conclusion both his discourse against the wicked shepherds and his prediction of the care that would come from him, he transfers the discourse to the sheep, teaching that the perversity of the shepherds does not furnish an excuse for the sheep;

for the sheep are rational, and possess discernment, and are able to flee from evil and to choose the good.

'And you, my sheep, thus says the Lord Adonai:'

'Behold, I will judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and he-goats.'

'For just as,' he says, 'I sit in judgment upon shepherds and sheep, so also will I be judge of the sheep, and I will punish those who do wrong.'

but also what is beyond need;

and this one may see happening even at the present time among certain people.

The parable of Lazarus also bears witness to this, showing that rich man not even sharing with the poor man the crumbs that fell from his table.

The phrase 'You trampled the remnant with your feet' was said figuratively, as of sheep, which eat the grass and trample the rest, and first drink the water and then muddy it with their feet.

'Behold, I am against you, and I will judge between the strong sheep and the weak sheep.'

Then he tells of the insolence of the strong:

'Because you thrust with your sides and your shoulders, and pushed with your horns at all the failing ones, and squeezed them out until you drove them outside, and my sheep were scattered to everyone passing by.'

'And I will save my sheep, and they shall no longer be for plunder.'

He has said everything as of sheep—shoulders, horns, and sides;

but through all these he exposed the unjust exercise of power by those in positions of strength;

and yet he promises security to the sheep.

Then comes the promise of the common salvation of all.

and this too according to nature, not according to worthiness;

for if those who have believed in him are not slaves but sons, much more is he himself—through whom the slaves enjoyed freedom—not a slave but a Son.

So too the blessed Paul says:

'Who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.' And Isaiah too cries out in his person, saying:

'Thus says the Lord, who formed me from the womb to be his own servant, to gather Jacob to himself;'

'and Israel shall be gathered to him;'

'Behold, I have given you as a covenant to a race, as a light to the nations, that you should be for salvation to the ends of the earth.' And the text:

'And Jacob my child, I will take hold of him.' In the Hebrew it stands, 'My servant.'

This testimony the divine evangelist also applied to our Lord Jesus.

And concerning the shepherd of the sheep being one, the Lord too said in the Gospels:

'And I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; those also I must bring, and they will hear my voice, and there shall be one flock, one shepherd.' Then he adds:

And the infallibility of what has been said he shows by what follows.

'I the Lord have spoken.' For the dignity of the one who has spoken suffices for the confirmation of the words.

Paul is the interpreter of this;

for he cries out concerning Christ:

'He himself is our peace, who has made the two one, and has broken down the dividing wall of the partition.' And this too he said above:

'And I will raise up over them one shepherd.' For one and the same shepherds both those who have believed from among the nations and those from among the Jews.

'And I will make wicked beasts vanish from the land.' Both the throngs of the wicked demons, and those men who are sick with a beast-like savagery—some of them being transformed, becoming rational, and being wholly rid of being beasts, and others being brought to an end by death.

'And they shall dwell in the wilderness confidently, and shall sleep in the woodlands.' Both are unfruitful;

but he says that they shall both take possession of and cultivate the wilderness of the nations, and shall have rest and healing in the woodland of the Jews.

and above, wishing to show the barrenness of Jerusalem, he said:

'For prophesy, son of man, against the woodland of the Negeb'—and this means the south, as we have said before.

'And I will give a blessing round about my mountain, and I will bring down the rain for you in its season; there shall be showers of blessing.'

For such are the teachings of the divine apostles, bringing to the souls of believers an irrigation full of blessing.

That divine Scripture often calls teaching 'rain,' the prophet Isaiah is a witness, when in the person of God he threatens the old vineyard, that 'It shall not be pruned, nor dug;'

'and I will command the clouds not to rain rain upon it.' (27)

'And the trees that are in the field shall yield their fruit, and the land shall yield its strength.'

For both those who are earthly in soul—that is, those who spring from the nations—and the Jews who like wild trees are unfruitful, when they come to the faith and enjoy such irrigation, shall yield to me the fruit of godliness.

'And they shall dwell upon their land in hope of peace.' He did not say 'in peace,' but 'in hope of peace;'

for to these who had believed in him the Lord said:

'In the world you have tribulation, but take courage, I have overcome the world.' And the divine Apostle also says:

'but hope that is seen is not hope;'

'for who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.' And again:

'And not only so, but we ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves, awaiting adoption, the redemption of our body.' Then comes what is most profitable of all:

'And they shall know that I am the Lord, when I break the bars of their yoke, and deliver them out of the hand of those who have enslaved them.'

(v. 28) 'And they shall no longer be for plunder to the nations;'

'And the beasts of the earth shall no more devour them.'

And I have already said that the prophecy is twofold:

for one part fits the Jews themselves, and the other fits all mankind.

For He both freed the Jews from the Babylonian captivity, and delivered us all from the tyranny of the devil.

By 'the bands of the yoke' He named the compulsion of servitude.

By 'nations and beasts,' in the case of the Jews He means their brutish enemies, but in our case the various ranks of the demons, who like savage beasts leap upon men.

Then He also points out the invincible weapon, I mean the hope set on Himself.

'And they shall dwell in hope, and there shall be none to make them afraid.' For it is better to hope in the Lord than to hope in man.

For he who has this hope cries out:

'All the nations compassed me about, and in the name of the Lord I repelled them.'

'And I will raise up for them a plant of peace unto a name.'

This the prophet Isaiah also declares:

'There shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall come up out of the root, and the Spirit of God shall rest upon Him,' and what follows.

'There shall be the root of Jesse, and He that arises to rule over the nations;'

'in Him shall the nations hope, and His rest shall be honour.' Interpreting this, the Lord said:

'I am the true vine, ye are the branches.' And in the Song of Songs we find the bride saying:

'As the apple among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons.' And so here likewise He says:

'I will raise up for them a plant of peace unto a name,' that is, most renowned, glorious, much celebrated.

But perhaps the passage hints at something else as well, that from the plant they shall receive the name.

For from Christ all the godly are called Christians.

'And they shall no more be few in number in the land.' That is, the godly.

For before the coming of Christ they were exceedingly few.

'And they shall no more be consumed by famine upon the land.' They shall enjoy, He says, every spiritual nourishment.

For here by 'famine' He names the deprivation of the word, with which God threatened through the prophets:

'For I will bring,' He says, 'not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the word of the Lord.' — 'And they shall no more bear the reproach of the nations.' And this again fits both us and the Jews.

Having filled the world, we are no longer reproached by those who remain in impiety, but are rather envied and regarded with jealousy.

And the Jews, after the return from Babylon, being freed from captivity, recovered their proper disposition.

'And they shall know that I am the Lord their God, and they are My people, the house of Israel, saith Adonai the Lord.'

For this is what the name signifies.

And in their case this came to pass after the return, but to us the prophecy fits more properly and more truly, inasmuch as our things are not a type but the truth.

'And ye are My sheep,' He says, 'the sheep of My pasture.'

And to show that the word is addressed not only to Israel but to the whole nature of mankind, He has necessarily added:

'Ye are men, and I am the Lord your God, saith Adonai the Lord.' For you, having been freed from your brutishness, acquire the disposition befitting the nature of men.

'And I will be your God and Lord, exercising all providence and care over you.'

This, then, is the meaning of the prophecy.

For my part, I consider it nothing new that the Jews should, as is their wont, act foolishly; but I marvel at some of our own who dare to refer everything to Zerubbabel, and fail to understand that most of what is said stands directly opposed to the things done by him.

'They shall dwell in hope, and there shall be none to make them afraid, and I will raise up for them a plant of peace unto a name, and they shall no more be consumed by famine upon the land, and they shall no more bear the reproach of the nations' — these happen to be wholly contrary to the history concerning him.

For he, having returned from Babylon and begun to rebuild the divine temple, was prevented by the neighbouring nations from bringing the work to completion.

And after another eighty-two years the city received its walls, when Nehemiah raised them up in the thirty-second year of the reign of Artaxerxes.

And the rest likewise it is easy for the studious to set alongside the history and to perceive the discrepancy.

Therefore some things fit those men, but most fit the salvation of the world.