Chapter Eleven

The Departure of Jehovah from Jerusalem

1–3. The princes caught at the exit from the temple, in its eastern gates, at a council in which the leaders in self-confident hope in the fortified city want to venture to battle with the Chaldeans. 4–13. God predicts through the prophet that Jerusalem, stained with blood, will fall into the hands of the enemy, who at the border of Israel will execute strict judgment on the traitors. 14–21. On the contrary, the captives, on whom Jerusalem looks with contempt, may hope for a better future if only they genuinely turn to God; thus here is indicated in the same dramatic form of God’s judgment upon Jerusalem a new, already the third reason for its fall (the first – the desecration of the temple by idolatry, the second – wickedness: Ezek 9:9), the immediate reason – the foolish attempt of the authorities to resist the Chaldeans. 22–25. After this prediction the glory of the Lord continues its path and the vision ends.

Ezekiel 11:1. And a spirit lifted me up, and brought me to the eastern gate of the house of the Lord, which faces toward the east. And behold, at the entrance of the gate twenty-five men; and among them I saw Jaazaniah, the son of Azzur, and Pelatiah, the son of Benaiah, princes of the people. “And a spirit lifted me up and brought,” as in Ezek 43:5; cf. Ezek 3:14, and not as everywhere before in this vision simply “brought” (and without subject: Ezek 8:7), perhaps on account of the distance and difficulty of walking in the footsteps of the glory of the Lord, especially for a visionary state... – “To the eastern gate of the house of the Lord, which faces toward the east.” The last, seemingly superfluous addition, perhaps means to say that these gates were the last in the temple and nothing obscured the rising sun from here; those counseling at these gates, in the same number as the sun-worshippers, were likewise turned toward the east. – “At the entrance of the gate”: under the vault formed by the thick wall in which the gates were constructed. In the east at the gates, judicial investigations are conducted and the guilty are punished on the spot. In the present case at the eastern gates evidently a session of the leaders was taking place; that it took place not at the city gates but at the temple gates, this undoubtedly indicates the actual existence then of such a practice, cf. Jer 26:10; Ezekiel seems to want to condemn this practice in Ezek 44:2-3. “Twenty-five men.” If of them concerning two, named by name, it is said that they were princes of the people, then this should be applied to the rest, as already shown by their participation in such an important state council. Hardly is this only a round number (not said: “about,” as in Ezek 8:16 and here in the LXX); it is probable that in fact there existed then a collegial institution of such a number of members. Perhaps it consisted of 12 leaders of tribes and 12 royal officials or military authorities with a commander-in-chief at the head according to 1 Chr 26 (Keil); others, basing themselves on rabbinic tradition, see in them leaders of 24 districts of the city with a prince of the royal family. In any case these 25 men represent the whole civil government of Israel, as the twenty-five priests mentioned in Ezek 8:16 represent the religious government. Among them two, as there one, proved known to the prophet and of course also to his fellow-countrymen, and he knew them by face. The second of them Pelatiah is mentioned presumably because of the event recounted in verse 13 – his sudden striking down by God, and the first Jaazaniah – is mentioned, perhaps because he was distinguished in some way during the time of war or simply as the namesake of Jaazaniah Ezek 8:11 (but not identical with him, as the patronymic shows). The very names and patronymics of these two princes of the people are significant: 1) in that the name of Jehovah is contained in three of them, an explanation of which see in Ezek 8:11; 2) in that they give thought to the hope in God which the then Jews entertained without repentance of sins (Hengstenberg): “Jaazaniah son of Azzur” – “God hears, son of help,” “Pelatiah son of Benaiah” – “God hastens, son of God’s building.” Since according to chapter IX all the wicked population of Jerusalem is destroyed, and according to chapter X the city itself is burned, the appearance here of 25 leaders, who discuss the salvation of the city from being taken by the Chaldeans, is considered an inconsistency, which is attributed to Ezekiel’s literary carelessness. But in making this charge against Ezekiel, they forget that visions do not abide by the laws of space and time, because these laws do not have force in the supersensible world into which visions penetrate.

Ezekiel 11:2. And He said to me: Son of man! These are the men who plot iniquity and give evil counsel in this city, “He (added by Russian translation; in Church Slavonic the addition: “the Lord”) said to me.” Without subject; see explanation in Ezek 2:1. – “Iniquity,” Church Slavonic more precisely: “vanity.” – “Evil counsel.” In what it consists is shown in the following verse. In human counsel is established something directly opposite to what is already established in divine counsel.

Ezekiel 11:3. saying, “It is not near; let us build houses; he is the cauldron, and we are the meat. “It is not near,” that is, the fall of Judah. – “Let us build houses,” the siege will end successfully. Perhaps an intentional misuse of the counsel of Jeremiah to the captives in Jer 29:15. The obscure Hebrew expression, however, permits more than one translation: Church Slavonic: “not in newness are houses built,” that is, after the first siege by Nebuchadnezzar Jerusalem was again built and repaired, the same will be after the second. – “He (the city) is the cauldron, and we are the meat.” However grievous it may be in the fire of siege, yet the strong walls of the city will protect us from death as well as the walls of a cauldron protect meat from burning.

Ezekiel 11:4. Therefore prophesy against them, prophesy, son of man. “Prophesy against them, prophesy.” In the Hebrew a literal repetition, as also in Church Slavonic: “prophesy against them, prophesy,” cf. Ezek 37:9 – to indicate the force and spiritual strain with which the prophet is now to prophesy.

Ezekiel 11:5. And the Spirit of the Lord fell upon me, and said to me: Say, Thus says the Lord: This is what you are saying, O house of Israel, and what comes into your mind I know. “And the Spirit of the Lord fell upon me,” although the prophet is already in a state of inspiration – in ecstasy; such is, consequently, the difference between ordinary inspiration and ecstatic: the former imparts special acuteness to the mind, the latter – to spiritual perception and sensation. – “House of Israel,” because the 25 princes represented it. – “And what comes into your mind.” The plans of mutiny and resistance to Nebuchadnezzar were held in secret at first.

Ezekiel 11:6. You have multiplied slain in this city, and you have filled its streets with the dead. Here is meant capital punishment, instances of which, judging by the importance which Ezekiel attaches to this, must have been very frequent; cf. Ezek 7:23 and especially Ezek 22:6.

Ezekiel 11:7. Therefore thus says the Lord God: The slain whom you have laid in the midst of it, they are the meat, and it is the cauldron; but you I will bring out of it. Having pointed out the guilt of the people’s rulers, the prophet begins the threat to them with an ironic application of the comparison they used of the city as a cauldron: only the innocently slain lie solidly and reliably in Jerusalem, who as it were would not want to have beside them and after death their murderers, and the latter must abandon Jerusalem; for what terrible purpose, verse 6–10 speaks. cf. Ezek 24:6 and ff. “The Lord God” in the Greek more correctly simply “the Lord”: solemnity is here no more required than in verse 5, where there is simply: “the Lord.”

Ezekiel 11:8. You fear the sword; and I will bring a sword upon you, says the Lord God. Ezekiel 11:9. And I will bring you out from it, and give you into the hands of foreigners, and will execute judgment on you. They must repay with their blood for the innocent blood that was shed. And behold, the Lord delivers them into the very hands of their enemies. The walls of the city will not protect it from the Chaldean sword. Having broken away from Babylon and entered into alliance with Egypt, the people’s rulers will not thereby turn aside the Chaldean sword; on the contrary, they will draw it down upon themselves. Cf. Prov 10:24.

Ezekiel 11:10. By the sword you will fall; on the borders of Israel I will judge you, and you will know that I am the Lord. “By the sword you will fall,” where and how is indicated further on. “On the borders of Israel I will judge you”; not only outside Jerusalem, but scarcely outside the country itself. The judgment meant here is that of Nebuchadnezzar, who in this case, according to God’s view, took the place of God Himself, the judgment carried out by him against the faithless Judeans at the frontier Riblah (see explanation Ezek 6:14), where among others the sons of Zedekiah were condemned to death and he to blindness. The Slavonic instead of “on the borders” has “on the mountains,” obviously reading ορεων instead of οριων. The purpose of Jehovah’s actions is always one in Ezekiel — the knowledge of Him (cf. Ezek 6:7).

Ezekiel 11:11. It shall not be a pot for you, nor shall you be the meat in it; on the borders of Israel I will judge you. The verse connects the beginning of the prophetic speech with the end, and verse 12 adds another important reason for the destruction of the city; cf. v. 18; Ezek 6:7. In the second half of v. 12 a negation may be implied, as in Isa 11:12 according to the Hebrew text; however, cf. Ezek 20:32. The verses do not contain a single new thought, which is why the LXX in the time of blessed Jerome did not have them; but repetition is a characteristic of Ezekiel.

Ezekiel 11:13. And it happened that when I was prophesying, Peltiah son of Benaiah died. And I fell on my face and cried out with a loud voice, and said: Oh, Lord God! Are you going to completely destroy the remnant of Israel? God’s threat immediately produced an effect which confirms the truthfulness of the entire prediction. Undoubtedly at the very moment of the vision when the prophet received the revelation of verses 4–12 (“when I was prophesying”), Peltiah mentioned in v. 1, who perhaps was the leader of the party hostile to true prophecy, suddenly died in Jerusalem. The prophet, of course, was able to see this death from Babylon with no less clarity than those possessing double vision. What must the captives have felt, to whom Ezekiel recounted his vision (Ezek 11:25), when subsequently news of Peltiah’s death reached them from Jerusalem! This death struck the prophet not only with natural compassion for the deceased, but chiefly as a dreadful sign that in this way the entire remnant of Israel might be destroyed, which the Lord had promised to preserve through Jeremiah: Jer 4:27. “Oh” (cf. Ezek 9:8) is the Hebrew interjection of heavy sighing “ahah,” which the LXX probably read as two: “woe to me, bitterly to me.”

Ezekiel 11:15. Son of man! Your brothers, your brothers, your own kinsmen and the entire house of Israel — all of them — those living in Jerusalem say to them: “Live far from the Lord; this land has been given to us as our possession. God corrects the prophet’s mistaken view that Jerusalem is all that remains of Israel: the prophet forgets about his brothers, his kinsmen (Slavonic: “the men of your captivity”; in the Hebrew word “geula” for such a meaning one would need to drop one letter: “gola”), brothers (repetition from intensity of feeling), about the entire house of Israel — the scattered ten-tribe kingdom — about all of them taken together (a prophetic hint of the future reunion of Judah and Israel; Slavonic: “perished,” that is, lost in the opinion of the Jerusalemites). In Hebrew, these are nominatives absolute: “your brothers” and so forth. “Have you forgotten them?” God reproaches him that the prophet, through his fear for the remnant of Israel, becomes, without noticing it himself, the spokesman of the proud Jerusalemites, who do not count the captives as God’s people only because they live “far from the Lord,” that is, far from the temple, and do not possess the holy land: the holy land was considered as inseparable from Jehovah, as pagan lands from their gods: 1 Sam 26:19; 2 Sam 17:23; Jer 48:7; only in difficult circumstances did they free themselves from this view: Ezek 8:12; cf. Jer 24:1. The view presented by the prophet is very characteristic of the bold presumption of those remaining in Palestine, who looked upon themselves as the exclusive heirs of the covenantal promise made to Abraham in Gen 15:18.

Ezekiel 11:16. Therefore say: Thus says the Lord God: Although I have removed them among the nations and scattered them among the lands, yet I will be to them a sanctuary, though a small one, in the lands to which they have gone. “Lands” see explanation Ezek 5:5. “I will be to them a sanctuary,” Slavonic: “for sanctification in a small measure” — the farther from the temple, the less holiness for Ezekiel; on this principle is built his entire division of the future holy land between priests, Levites, princes, and people (ch. XLVIII). It is true that even in a foreign land Jehovah remains the God of Israel; but in an unclean land (cf. Ezek 4:9 and following) of captivity He cannot be worshiped with full cult, with sacrifices, and so forth. Thus the prophet does not dispute in substance the view of the Jerusalemites on the exile as a grievous separation from Jehovah, but promises in the next verse a speedy return to the holy land; wherefore the Hebrew conjunctive particle here is more accurately translated in Slavonic as “and,” than in Russian as “but.”

Ezekiel 11:17. Therefore say: Thus says the Lord God: I will gather you from the peoples, and collect you from the lands to which you have been scattered; and I will give you the land of Israel. “Therefore”: Slavonic: “for this reason,” cf. explanation of v. 16. “You.” The speech pathetically transitions from the third person plural to the second person; but Slavonic has “I.”

Ezekiel 11:18. And they will come there, and will remove from it all its abominations and all its abominable things. The speech transitions again to the third person, partly because the predicted event relates more to the following generation than to the contemporary one. “Upon their return to the holy land, the first deed will be the removal of everything that might cause injury to the purity of the land, as the future bearer of true worship, that is, the removal of idols and shrines; this painstaking care for the purity of the land, which here, as also in chapter VI, is presented as responsible for the abominations committed in it, is characteristic of Ezekiel’s ideals of purity and worship”; cf. Ezek 39:11-16 (Kraetzschmar). After the exile the Jews indeed irrevocably renounced idolatry. But beyond the elimination of every trace of idolatry the forces of those who returned do not extend: everything else, that is, inner renewal, is the work of Jehovah v. 19; but according to Kraetzschmar, hard experience in Ezekiel’s soul-saving activity speaks here.

Ezekiel 11:19. And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, Ezek 11 Ezek 36:26; cf. Deut 30:6; Jer 24:7. Heart is the seat of feeling, but also of volitional decisions (Ezek 38:10) and in the latter respect is essentially identical with spirit. All sensation, thought, and behavior in the Hebrews after their return from exile will be directed toward Jehovah, not toward idols. But the complete fulfillment of this promise became possible only in Christianity with its gracious rebirth of man (2 Cor 3:3). “One heart.” LXX: “new,” reading ἄλλο instead of ἓν — “other,” which better suits the context.

Ezekiel 11:20. And they will walk by My commandments, and will keep My statutes, and will perform them; and they will be My people, and I will be their God. The verse indicates in what the spiritual renewal of Israel will express itself: in the fulfillment of moral and ceremonial laws. “Commandments,” “statutes” are terms of Mosaic legislation; see explanation Ezek 5:6. The prophet Ezekiel here rises to the height of a Christian view of the inner relation of the renewed human heart to God, when it can do nothing else but good, for this lies in its very nature, just as it lies in the nature of the sun to shine, in the nature of a tree to bear fruit. Although the thought of man’s spiritual rebirth might have been suggested to Ezekiel by chapter XXIV of Jeremiah, it received from him greater clarity and distinctness.

Ezekiel 11:21. But as for those whose hearts are devoted to their abominations and abominable things, I will repay their deeds on their own heads, says the Lord God. The threat hardly relates to those among the returnees to Judea who will not abandon idolatry (for such persons according to the progression of the preceding thoughts are scarcely possible), but rather to those remaining in Jerusalem, to whom the speech returns to its beginning. The beginning of the verse in Hebrew is not entirely smooth. 21b Ezek 9:10.

Ezekiel 11:22. Then the cherubim lifted up their wings, and the wheels beside them; and the glory of the God of Israel was above them. If the preceding threat (v. 21) relates to the Jerusalemites, then it is immediately carried out through the removal of the Lord from the city. The removal of the glory of the Lord begins, as also in Ezek 10:19, with the lifting of wings at the cherubim for flight or separation from the earth and the movement of the wheels.

Ezekiel 11:23. And the glory of the Lord rose from the midst of the city and stood over the mountain which is to the east of the city. The mountain which is to the east of the city is the Mount of Olives, named by that name later in 2 Sam 15:30; Zech 14:4. It is 818 meters high and commands the city. According to Zechariah, from this mountain God will execute judgment upon wickedness and save His people. From it the Savior ascended. In a straight line to the east the glory of the Lord pursues its course: from the Holy of Holies through the threshold of the temple, the eastern gates, and the eastern mountain, without of course any need to go around it. This mountain constituted the line of the horizon, and beginning from it the prophet could no longer follow the movement of the glory of the Lord, but could only suppose, perhaps, that it went further to the east so that subsequently it would return from there to the mysterious temple of the end of times (Ezek 43:2). Why did the glory of the Lord stop at the Mount of Olives? Various conjectures are made about this. The Mount of Olives lay on the extreme (eastern) periphery of the city district, just as the eastern gates of the temple, at which was the penultimate stopping place of the glory of the Lord, lay on such a periphery of the temple; and the stopping here, as well as there, of the glory of the Lord might be a sign of the heaviness for the Lord of parting with His age-old dwelling place on Zion. This is the more probable conjecture than that by which God wanted from the mountain to watch the burning of the city (the course of the description presumes this punishment already accomplished) or wanted to remain on it until returning to the new temple (a removal to such closeness could not have been so complex and solemn); others suppose that from this mountain the glory of the Lord was to rise into heaven, and the rabbis say that the Shekhinah remained three months on the mountain, unsuccessfully calling the people to repentance (Stanley, Palestine, p. 186).

Ezekiel 11:24. And the Spirit lifted me up and carried me away to Chaldea, to those in captivity, in the vision by the Spirit of God. And the vision that I had seen departed from me. The final fact of the ecstasy is that the prophet feels himself transported to his actual place of residence. It is not said that this transportation was accompanied by the same sensation (being held by the hair and floating through the air) as the transportation to Jerusalem; on the contrary, the addition: “in the vision by the Spirit of God” seems to indicate a greater spirituality of sensation. “By the Spirit of God” only here in Ezekiel; it is here somewhat unexpected: “the Spirit carried me... by the Spirit of God,” and, if authentic, should have the meaning of God’s power in general, the direct participation of God in transporting the prophet.

Ezekiel 11:25. And I recounted to the exiles all the words of the Lord which He had revealed to me. Since the vision was intended not for the prophet personally (as partly chapter I), but for the people, the prophet recounts it to the exiles, that is, immediately to the elders who were with him at the moment of the vision (Ezek 8:1), and through them or apart from them to the multitude. “All the words of the Lord,” that is, all that was both seen and heard, and not just heard, that is, for instance Ezek 11:4-21, as the frequent use of the Hebrew “dabar” (“word”) in the sense of “thing” shows, and the further definition to “words of the Lord which He revealed,” Slavonic: “showed” (not “said”).