A HOMILETIC COMMENTARY ON THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET EZEKIEL CHAPTERS I. XI. By the REV. D. G. WATT, M.A. CHAPTERS XII.-XXIX. By the REV. T. H. LEALE. CHAPTERS XXX.-XLVIII. By the REV. GEO. BARLOW. London: RICHARD D. DICKINSON, 89 FARRINGDON STREET. PREFACE. 1 THIS Commentary is the work of three different authors. The portion chapters i.-xi. is written by the Rev. D. G. WATT, M. A.; xii.-xxix. by the Rev. T. H. LEALE; xxx.-xlviii. by the Rev. G. BARLOW. The Exegetical Notes contain, in a condensed form, the results of recent Biblical criticism, and will be found a valuable help in the interpretation of the text and in furnishing facts of contemporaneous history to elucidate the prophecies. The Vision of the Temple (chapters xl.-xlviii.) is treated in its ideal aspect, and, viewed in this light, it becomes full of suggestiveness to the practised homilete. Every available work on this confessedly difficult book has been diligently consulted, and the choicest and most helpful passages of the best authors are condensed in the body of this Commentary. Of the 390 Homiletic Outlines all are original, except those which bear the names of their respective authors. Among other works, the following writers on the Prophecies of Ezekiel have been carefully scanned :-W. Greenhill, E. Henderson, Patrick Fairbairn, Hengstenberg, Keil, M'Farlan, Archbishop Newcombe, Bishop Horsley, Dean Stanley, Kitto, Dr. Frazer's "Synoptical Lectures," Geikie's "Hours with the Bible," Pool's "Annotations," Lightfoot on "The Temple," F. D. Maurice's "Prophets and Kings," Guthrie's "Gospel in Ezekiel," and the following Commentaries-The Speaker's, Lange's, A. Clarke's, Benson's, Sutcliffe's, Matthew Henry's, Trapp's, and Fausset's. Amid the wealth of imagery in the use of which Ezekiel is so lavish, and the dry facts of history, the aim throughout has been to detect and develop the great moral truths of which the thoughtful sermoniser is in constant search in his anxious study of the Word of God. SHEFFIELD, August 1890. G. B. HOMILETIC COMMENTARY ON THE BOOK OF EZEKIEL. INTRODUCTION. No prophetical book sets the writer, the dates, the places of its contents so distinctly forth as that of Ezekiel does. It is not only a record of what the Lord spoke by His prophet, it is also a record of personal experiences during the period in which he was an organ for special divine impulses. The one is as instructive as the other. The book shows that Ezekiel was the child of a priestly family, and had been taken into captivity when the king of Babylon carried away the wealth, the strength, the skilled industry of Jerusalem. No direct information is communicated as to his life before the captivity, or as to the first five years of his enforced exile. We cannot say that he had ever officiated as a priest in the Temple of Jerusalem, though his movements show apparent familiarity with its compartments (chap. viii.). He was one of a colony of his fellow-exiles who had been settled-why, he does not say-by the Chebar, somewhere among "the rivers of Babylon," and had established a characteristic organisation for themselves. "The elders" once and again took counsel with Ezekiel in his own house; for he was a householder and married to a woman whom he warmly loved. He starts his narration from the fifth day of the fourth month of the fifth year, when the distinguished episode in his life, by which he became known, was commenced with his first vision of God. That revelation affected his constitution in a remarkable manner. Mental conditions, of course, would be altered thereby; but bodily affections were still more palpably influenced. The sensation of eating the roll of writing, of being lifted up and carried away, of the strong hand of the Lord laid upon him; the sitting" astonished "-stunned-seven days, the lengthened duress, the loss of power speech, except when authorised by the Lord to utter His messages, and other physical phenomena, betoken at once the action of God and of a disorder in Ezekiel's health. Perhaps his nervous system was one of that highly sensitive kind whose conditions under excitement cannot be foreseen; and that it should have been upset could not be regarded as an unlikely thing. God's instruments are not always such as man would employ. He chose, for an apostle, Paul, whose "bodily presence was weak;" is it impossible that He would choose, for a prophet, a man of a peculiarly nervous temperament? If |