A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Introduction to the Old Testament

J >> John Edgar McFadyen >> Introduction to the Old Testament




The following is a sketch of the book. After five years of residence
in the land of exile, Ezekiel, through an ecstatic vision in which
he beholds a mysterious chariot with God enthroned above it,
receives his prophetic call to the "rebellious" exiles (i., ii.),
and is equipped for his task with the divine inspiration; that task
is partly to reprove, partly to warn (iii.). At once the prophet
addresses himself thereto, announcing the siege of Jerusalem and the
captivity of Judah--Israel has already been languishing in exile for
a century and a half (iv.).[1] The threefold fate of the inhabitants
is described (v.), and a stern and speedy fate is foretold for the
mountain land of Israel (vi.) and for the people (vii.). How
deserved that fate is becomes too pathetically plain in the
descriptions of the idolatrous worship with which the temple is
desecrated (viii.) and in chastisement for which the inhabitants are
slain (ix.) and their city burned (x.). Jehovah solemnly departs
from His desecrated temple (xi.).
[Footnote 1: For 390 in iv. 5 the Septuagint correctly reads 190,
and this includes the forty years of Judah's captivity.]

This general theme of the sin and fate of the city is continued with
variations throughout the rest of the first half of the book. The
horrors of the siege and exile are symbolically indicated, xii. 1-20,
and the false prophets and prophetesses, xiii. 17, are reproved and
denounced for encouraging, by their shallow optimism, the unbelief
of the people, xii. 21-xiv. 11. For the judgment will assuredly come
and no intercession will avail, xiv. 12-23. Israel, in her misery,
is like the wood of the vine, unprofitable to begin with, and now,
besides, scarred and burnt (xv.); her whole career has been one of
consistent infidelity--Israel and Judah alike (xvi.). And her kings
are as perfidious as her people-witness Zedekiah's treachery to the
king of Babylon (xvii.). But contrary to prevalent opinion, the present
generation is not atoning for the sins of the past; every man is free
and responsible and is dealt with precisely as he deserves--the soul
that sinneth, _it_ shall die (xviii.). Then follows a beautiful
elegy over the princes of Judah--Jehoahaz taken captive to Egypt, and
Jehoiachin to Babylon (xix.).

The third cycle (xx.-xxiv.) is, in the main, a repetition of the
second. From the very day of her election, Israel has been
unfaithful, giving herself over to idolatry, immorality, and the
profanation of the Sabbath (xx.). But the devouring fire will
consume, and the sharp sword of Nebuchadrezzar will be drawn, first
against Jerusalem, and then against Ammon (xxi.). The corruption of
Jerusalem is utter and absolute--princes, priests, prophets, and
people (xxii.); and this corruption has characterized her from the
very beginning--Samaria and Jerusalem, the northern and southern
kingdoms alike (xxiii.). So the end has come: the filth and rust of
the empty caldron--symbolic of Jerusalem after the first deportation
in 597 B.C.--will be purged away by a yet fiercer fire. The besieged
city is at length captured, and, like the prophet's wife, it
perishes unmourned (xxiv.).

The ministry of judgment, so far as it concerns Jerusalem, is now
over, and Ezekiel is free to turn to the more congenial task of
consolation and promise. But a negative condition of the restoration
of Israel is the removal of impediments to her welfare, and next to
her own sins her enemies are the greatest obstacle to her
restoration; it is with them, therefore, that the following
prophecies are concerned.

The seven oracles in chs. xxv.-xxxii. (587-586 B.C., cf. xxvi. 1,
except xxix. 17-21 in 570 B.C.) are directed against Ammon, Moab,
Edom, Philistia (xxv.), Tyre, xxvi. 1-xxviii. 19, Sidon, xxviii. 20-26,
and Egypt (xxix.-xxxii.). Tyre and Egypt receive elaborate attention;
the other peoples are dismissed with comparatively brief notice. The
general reason assigned for the destruction of the smaller peoples in
xxv. is their vengeful attitude to Israel. Ammon in particular is
singled out for her malicious joy over the destruction of the temple
and her mockery of the captive Jews. The destruction of these people
is no doubt to be brought about indirectly, if not directly, as in the
case of Tyre, xxvi. 7, and Egypt, xxix. 19, by Nebuchadrezzar. The
oracle against Tyre is one of Ezekiel's most brilliant compositions. The
glorious city is to be stormed and destroyed by Nebuchadrezzar (xxvi.),
and her fall is celebrated in a splendid dirge, in which she is
compared to a noble merchant ship wrecked by a furious storm upon the
high seas (xxvii.); her proud prince will be humbled to the ground
(xxviii.). Egypt is similarly threatened with a desolating invasion
at the hands of Nebuchadrezzar; the conquest of that country is to be
his recompense for his failure, contrary to Ezekiel's expectations, to
capture Tyre (xxix.). The day of Jehovah draws nigh upon Egypt (xxx.);
like a proud cedar she will be felled by the hand of Nebuchadrezzar
(xxxi.), and her fall is celebrated in two dirges--one in which Pharaoh
is compared to a crocodile; the other, weird and striking, describes
the arrival of the slain Egyptians in the world below (xxxii.).

With the disappearance of Israel's enemies, one of the great
obstacles to her restoration has been removed; but the greatest
obstacle is in Israel herself. She has been stiff-necked and
rebellious: now that the prophet's words have proved true,[1] each
individual for himself must give heed to his warning voice, not
merely consulting him, but obeying him (xxxiii.). Then Jehovah will
manifest His grace in many ways. He will send them an ideal king,
unlike the mercenary rulers of the past, who had plundered the flock
(xxxiv.). He will destroy the unbrotherly Edomites (xxxv.) and bless
His people Israel with the peaceful possession of a fruitful land,
and with the better blessing of the new heart (xxxvi.). Finally, He
will wake the people, who are now as good as dead, to a new life,
and unite the long sundered Israel and Judah under one sceptre for
ever (xxxvii.). In the final assault which will be made against His
people by the mysterious hordes of Gog from the north, He will
preserve them from danger, and multitudes of the assailants will
fall and be buried in the land of Israel (xxxviii., xxxix.).
[Footnote: In xxxiii. 21 the _twelfth_ year should be the
eleventh (cf. xxvi. 1). The news of the fall of Jerusalem would not
take over a year to travel to Babylon.]

Probably the book originally ended here: but from Ezekiel's point of
view, the remaining chapters (xl.-xlviii.) are thoroughly integral
to it, if indeed they be not its climax. The people are now redeemed
and restored to their own land: the problem is, how shall they
maintain the proper relations between themselves and their God? The
unorganized community must become a church, and an elaborate
organization is provided for it. The temple, with its buildings, is
therefore first minutely described, as that is to be the earthly
residence of the people's God; then the rights and duties of the
priests are strictly regulated: and lastly the holy land is so
redistributed among the tribes that the temple is practically in the
centre.

Chs. xl.-xliii. embrace the description and measurement of the
temple, with its courts, gateways, chambers, decorations, priests'
rooms and altar. When all is ready, Jehovah solemnly enters, xliii.
1-12, by the gate from which Ezekiel had in vision seen Him leave
almost nineteen years before, x. 19. The sanctity of the temple
where Jehovah is henceforth to dwell must be scrupulously
maintained, and this is secured by the regulations in xliv.-xlvi.
The menial services of the sanctuary, which were formerly performed
by foreigners, are to be henceforth performed by Levites. Then
follow regulations determining the duties and revenues of the
priests, the territory to be occupied by them, also by the Levites,
the city and the prince; the religious duties of the prince, and the
rite of atonement for the temple. The whole description is a
striking counterpart to the earlier vision of the desecration of the
temple (viii.). The last section (xlvii., xlviii.) deals with the
land which in these latter days is to share the redemption of the
people. The barren ground near the Dead Sea is to be made fertile,
and the waters of that sea sweet, by a stream issuing from
underneath the temple. The land will be redistributed, seven tribes
north and five south of the temple, and the city will bear the name
"Jehovah is there"--symbolic of the abiding presence of the people's
God.

Whatever be the precise meaning of the much disputed "thirtieth
year" in i. 1, Ezekiel was born probably about or not long before
the time Jeremiah began his ministry in 626 B.C. As a young man, he
must have heard Jeremiah preach, and this, coupled with the fact
that some of Jeremiah's prophecies were in circulation about eight
years before Ezekiel went into exile (605-597) explains the profound
influence which the older prophet plainly exercised upon the
younger. With Jehoiachin and the aristocracy, Ezekiel was taken in
597 to Babylon, where he lived with his wife, xxiv. 16, among the
Jewish colony on the banks of the Chebar, one of the canals
tributary to the Euphrates, i. 3.

Never had a prophet been more necessary. The people left behind in
the land were thoroughly depraved, xxxiii. 25ff., the exiles were
not much better, xiv. 3ff.--they are a rebellious house, ii. 6; and
even worse than they are the exiles who came with the second
deportation in 586, xiv. 22. Idolatry of many kinds had been
practised (viii.); and now that the penalty was being paid in exile,
the people were helpless, xxxvii. 11. For six years and a half--till
the city fell--Ezekiel's ministry was one of reproof; after that, of
consolation. The prophet becomes a pastor. His ministry lasted at
least twenty-two years, the last dated prophecy being in 570 (xxix.
17); for thirteen years before the writing of chs. xl.-xlviii. in
572 B.C. there is no dated prophecy, xxxii. 1, 17, so that this
sketch of ecclesiastical organization, pathetic as embodying an old
man's hope for the future, stands among his most mature and
deliberate work. His absolute candour is strikingly shown by his
refusal to cancel his original prophecy of the capture of Tyre by
Nebuchadrezzar, xxvi. 7, 8, which had not been fulfilled; he simply
appends another oracle and allows the two to stand side by side,
xxix. 17-20.

It is obvious that in Ezekiel prophecy has travelled far from the
methods, expressions and hopes that had characterized it in the days
of Amos and Isaiah, or even of Ezekiel's immediate predecessor and
contemporary, Jeremiah. In these books there are visions, such as
those of Amos, vii. 1, viii. 1, ix. 1, and symbolic acts like that
of Isaiah, xx. 2, walking barefoot; but there such things are only
occasional, here they abound. Their interpretation, too, is beset by
much uncertainty. Some maintain that the symbolic actions, unless
when they are obviously impossible, were really performed; others
regard them simply as part of the imaginative mechanism of the book.
The dumbness, e.g., with which Ezekiel was afflicted for a period,
iii. 26, xxiv. 27, xxxiii. 22, and which has been interpreted as "a
sense of restraint and defeat," may very well have been real, and
connected, as has been recently supposed, with certain pathological
conditions; but it is hardly to be believed that he lay on one side
for 190 days[1] (iv. 5). Again, though the curious action
representing the threefold fate of the inhabitants of the city in
ch. v. is somewhat grotesque, it is not absolutely impossible; but
it is difficult to see how the command to eat bread and drink water
"with trembling" can be taken literally, xii. 18. As the first
symbolic action in the book--the eating of the roll, iii. 1-3--must
be interpreted figuratively, it would seem not unfair to apply this
principle to all such actions. It is even applied by Reuss to the
very circumstantial story of the death of the prophet's wife, xxiv.
15ff., which he characterizes as an "easily deciphered hieroglyph."
[Footnote 1: So the Septuagint.]

Again, in spite of their highly elaborated detail, the visions
appeal, and are intended to appeal, rather to the mind than to the
eye. Such a vision as that of the divine chariot in ch. i. could not
be transferred to canvas; and if it could, the effect would be
anything but impressive. Regarded, however, as a creation of the
intellectual imagination, suggesting as it does certain attributes
of God, and clothing them with a mysterious and indefinable majesty,
it is not without an impressiveness of its own.

A similar sense of unreality has been held to pervade the speeches.
It has been asserted that they are simply artificial compositions,
never addressed and not capable of being addressed to any audience
of living men. Certainly one can hardly conceive of the last
chapters, with their minute description of the temple buildings,
officers and ceremonies, as forming part of a public address; and
some even of the earlier chapters, e.g. xvi., xxiii., do not suggest
that living contact with an audience which invests the earlier
prophets with their perennial dramatic interest. At the same time,
to regard him simply as an author and in no sense as a public man
would undoubtedly be to do him less than justice, cf. xi. 25. He was
in any case a pastor--a new office in Israel, to which he was led by
his overwhelming sense of the indefeasible importance of the
individual (iii. 18ff., xviii., xxxiii.). But--especially in his
earlier ministry, till the fall of the city--he was prophet as well
as pastor, with a public message of condemnation very much like that
of his predecessors. His reputation as a prophet naturally rose with
the corroboration which his words had received from the fall of the
city, xxxiii. 30, but even before this it must have been high, as we
find him frequently consulted, viii. 1, xiv. 1, xx. 1; and though
behind the real audience he addresses, we often cannot help feeling
that his words have in view that larger Israel of which the exiles
form a part (cf. vi.), the chapters, as they now stand, are no doubt
in most cases expansions of actual addresses. This view is
strengthened by the precision of the numerous chronological notices,
cf. viii. 1.

There is another important aspect in which the contrast between
Ezekiel and the pre-exilic prophets is very great: viz. in his
attitude to ritual. Every one of them had expressed in emphatic
language the relative, if not the absolute, indifference of ritual
to true religion (Amos v. 25, Hos. vi. 6, Isa. i. 11ff., Mic. vi. 6-8).
No one had expressed himself in language more strong and unmistakable
than Ezekiel's contemporary, Jeremiah. Yet Ezekiel himself devotes no
less than nine chapters to a detailed programme for the ecclesiastical
organization of the state after the return from exile (xl.-xlviii.).
With some justice Lucien Gautier has called him the "clerical" prophet,
and Duhm goes so far as to say that he annihilated spontaneous and
ethical religion. This, as we shall see, is a grave exaggeration; but
there can be no doubt that in Ezekiel the centre of gravity of prophecy
has shifted. He threw ritual into a prominence which, in prophecy, it
had never had before, and which, from his day on, it successfully
maintained (cf. Hag., Zech., Mal.).

It is difficult to estimate justly the importance to Hebrew religion
of the new turn given to it by Ezekiel: it seems to be, and in
reality it is, a descent from the more purely spiritual and ethical
conception of the earlier prophets. But two things have to be
remembered (1) that, for the situation contemplated by Ezekiel, such
a programme as that which he drew up was a practical religious
necessity. The spiritual atmosphere in which Jeremiah drew his
breath so freely was too rare for the average Israelite. Religious
conceptions had to be expressed in material symbols. The land and
the temple had been profaned by sin (viii.); after the return, their
holiness must be secured and guaranteed, and Ezekiel's legislation
makes the necessary provision by translating that idea into specific
and concrete applications.

But (2) though ritual interests are very prominent towards the close
of the book, they do not by any means exhaust the religious
interests of Ezekiel. If not very frequently, at any rate very
deliberately and emphatically, he asserts the ethical elements that
are inseparable from true religion and the moral responsibility of
the individual (iii., xviii., xxxiii.). Indeed, the background of
xl.-xlviii. is a people redeemed from their sin. The worshippers are
the redeemed; and even in this almost exclusively ritual section
ethical interests are not forgotten, xlv. 9ff. In interpreting the
mind of the man who sketched this priestly legislation, it is surely
unfair to ignore those profound and noble utterances touching the
necessity of the new heart, xviii. 31, xxxvi. 26, and the new
spirit, xi. 19, utterances which have the ring of some of the
greatest words of Jeremiah.

It must be admitted, however, that Ezekiel did not fully realize the
implications of these profound words: he at once proceeds to apply
them in a somewhat mechanical way, which suggests that his religion
is a thing of "statutes and judgments," if it is also a thing of the
spirit, xxxvi. 27 (cf. xx. 11, 13), and this tendency to a
mechanical view of things is characteristic of the prophet. Even in
the great chapter asserting the responsibility of the individual
(xviii.) something of this tendency appears in the isolation of the
various periods of the individual life from each other. It shows
itself again in his description of the river that issues from under
the threshold of the temple, xlvii. 3-6. His imagination, which was
considerably influenced by Babylonian art, is undisciplined. Images
are worked out with a detail artistically unnecessary, and
aesthetically sometimes offensive (xvi., xxiii.). On the other hand
the book is not destitute of noble and chastened imaginations. The
weird fate of Egypt in the underworld, xxxii. 17-32, the glory of
Tyre and the horror which her fate elicits (xxvii.) are described
with great power. Nothing could be more impressive than the vision
of the valley of dry bones--the fearful solitude and the mysterious
resurrection (xxxvii.). Ezekiel's imaginative power perhaps reaches
its climax in his vision of the destruction of Jerusalem and her
idolatrous people. On the judgment day we see the corpses of the
sinners, slain by supernatural executioners, lying silently in the
temple court, the prophet prostrate and sorrowful, and the angel
departing with glowing coals to set fire to the guilty city, ix. i-x. 7.

The two chief elements in later Judaism practically owe their origin
to Ezekiel, viz. apocalypse and legalism. The former finds
expression in chs. xxxviii, xxxix., where, preliminary to Israel's
restoration, Gog of the land of Magog--an ideal, rather than, like
the Assyrians or Babylonians, an historical enemy of Israel--is to
be destroyed. We have already seen how prominent the legalistic
interest is in xl.-xlviii., but it is also apparent elsewhere.
Ezekiel, e.g., lays unusual stress upon the institution of the
Sabbath, and counts its profanation one of the gravest of the
national sins, xx. 12, xxii. 8, xxiii. 38. The priestly interests of
Ezekiel are easily explained by his early environment. He belonged
by birth to the Jerusalem priesthood, i. 3, xliv. 15, and he
received his early training under the prophetico-priestly impulse of
the Deuteronomic reformation.

From the critical standpoint, the book of Ezekiel is of the highest
importance. Chs. xl.-xlviii. fall midway between the simpler
legislation of Deuteronomy, and the very elaborate legislation of
the priestly parts of the Pentateuch. This is especially plain in
the laws affecting the priests and the Levites.

In Deuteronomy no distinction is made between them; there the phrase
is, "the priests the Levites" (Deut. xviii. 1); in the priestly code
(cf. Num. iii., iv., v.) they are very sharply distinguished, the
Levites being reserved for the more menial work of the sanctuary.
Now the origin of this distinction can be traced to Ezekiel,
according to whom the Levites were the priests who had been degraded
from their priestly office, because they had ministered in
idolatrous worship at the high places, xliv. 6ff., whereas the
priests were the Zadokites who had ministered only at Jerusalem. The
natural inference is that, at least in this respect, the priestly
legislation of the Pentateuch is later than Ezekiel. A close study
of chs. xl.-xlviii. enables us to extend this inference. Between
Ezekiel and that legislation there are serious differences (cf.
xlvi. 13, Exod. xxix. 38, Num. xxviii. 4), which, as early as the
beginning of the Christian era, gave much perplexity to Jewish
scholars. "According to the traditional view," as Reuss has said,
"Ezekiel would be reforming, not Israel, but Moses, the man of God,
and the mouth of Jehovah Himself." We have no alternative, then, but
to suppose that Ezekiel is earlier than the priestly legislation of
the Pentateuch, and that this sketch in xl.-xlviii. prepared the way
for it.

In Ezekiel the older prophetic conception of God has undergone a
change. It has become more transcendental, with the result that the
love of God is overshadowed by His holiness. It is of His grace, no
doubt, that the people are ultimately saved; but, according to
Ezekiel, He is prompted to His redemptive work not so much out of
pity for the fallen people, xxxvi. 22, but rather "for His name's
sake," xx. 44--that name which has been profaned by Israel in the
sight of the heathen, xx. 14. The goal of history is, in Ezekiel's
ever-recurring phrase, that men may "know that I am Jehovah."
Corresponding to this transcendental view of God is his view of man
as frail and weak--over and over again Ezekiel is addressed as
"child of man"--and history has only too faithfully exhibited that
inherent and all but ineradicable weakness. While other prophets,
like Hosea and Jeremiah, had seen in the earlier years of Israel's
history, a dawn which bore the promise of a beautiful day, to
Ezekiel that history has from the very beginning been one unbroken
record of apostasy (xvi., xxiii.). On the other hand, Ezekiel laid a
wholesome, if perhaps exaggerated, emphasis on the possibility of
human freedom. A man's destiny, he maintained, was not irretrievably
determined either by hereditary influences, xviii. 2ff., or by his
own past, xxxiii. 10f. Further, Jeremiah had felt, if he had not
said, that the individual, not the nation, is the real unit in
religion: to Ezekiel belongs the merit of supplementing this
conception by that other, that religion implies fellowship, and that
individuals find their truest religious life only when united in the
kingdom of God (xl.-xlviii.).




HOSEA


The book of Hosea divides naturally into two parts: i.-iii. and iv.-xiv.,
the former relatively clear and connected, the latter unusually
disjointed and obscure. The difference is so unmistakable that i.-iii.
have usually been assigned to the period before the death of Jeroboam II,
and iv.-xiv. to the anarchic period which succeeded. Certainly Hosea's
prophetic career began before the end of Jeroboam's reign, as he predicts
the fall of the reigning dynasty, i. 4, which practically ended with
Jeroboam's death.[1] But i.-iii. seem to be the result of long and
agonized meditation on the meaning of his wedded life: it was not at
once that he discovered
Gomer to be an unfaithful wife, i. 2, and it must have been later
still that he learned to interpret the impulse which led him to her
and threw such sorrow about his life, as a word of the Lord, i. 2.
These chapters were probably therefore written late, though the
experiences they record were early.
[Footnote 1: Zechariah his son reigned for only six months.]

Of the date, generally speaking, of iv.-xiv. there can be no doubt:
they reflect but too faithfully the confusion of the times that
followed Jeroboam's death. It is a period of hopeless anarchy. Moral
law is set at defiance, and society, from one end to the other, is
in confusion, iv. 1, 2, vii. 1. The court is corrupt, conspiracies
are rife, kings are assassinated, vii. 3-7, x. 15. We are
irresistibly reminded of the rapid succession of kings that followed
Jeroboam--Zechariah his son, Shallum, Menahem, Pekahiah, Pekah.
Gilead, however, is still part of the northern kingdom, vi. 8, xii.
11, so that the deportation effected by Tiglath Pileser in 734 B.C.
has not yet taken place (2 Kings xv. 29). Further, there is no
mention of the combination of Israel and Aram against Judah; and, as
Hosea was a very close observer of the political situation, his
silence on this point may be assumed to imply that his prophecies
fall earlier than 735. The date of his prophetic career may safely
be set about 743-736 B.C. In chs. i. and iii. Hosea reads the
experiences of his wedded life as a symbol of Jehovah's experience
with Israel. Gomer bore him three children, to whom he gave names
symbolic of the impending fate[1] of Israel, i. 1-9. The faithless
Gomer abandons Hosea for a paramour, but he is moved by his love for
her to buy her out of the degradation into which she has fallen, and
takes earnest measures to wean her to a better mind. All this Hosea
learns to interpret as symbolic of the divine love for Israel, which
refuses to be defeated, but will seek to recover the people, though
it be through the stern discipline of exile (iii.). Ch. ii. elaborates
the idea, suggested by these chapters, of Israel's adultery, i.e. of
her unfaithfulness to Jehovah, of the fate to which it will bring her,
and of her redemption from that fate by the love of her God.[2]
[Footnote 1: Chs. i. 10-ii. 1 interrupts the stern context with an
outlook on the Messianic days, considers Judah as well as Israel,
presupposes the exile of Judah, and anticipates ii. 21-23. It can
hardly therefore be Hosea's; nor can i. 7, which is quite irrelevant
and appears to be an allusion to the deliverance of Jerusalem from
Sennacherib in 701 B.C.]
[Footnote 2: It is much more satisfactory to interpret i., iii. as a
real experience of Hosea, and not simply as an allegory. If it be
objected, on the one hand, that the names of the last two children
are not probable names, it may be urged, on the other, that Gomer
seems to be an actual name, for which no plausible allegorical
meaning has been suggested.]

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