Franz Delitzsch

“ Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways! for why will ye die, O house of Israel? Eze 33:12. And thou, son of man, say to the sons of thy people, The righteousness of the righteous man will not deliver him in the day of his transgression, and the sinner will not fall through his sin in the day that he turneth from his sin, and the righteous man will not be able to live thereby in the day that he sinneth. Eze 33:13. If I say to the righteous man that he shall live, and he relies upon his righteousness and does wrong, all his righteousnesses will not be remembered ”

“ If, now, we close with a review of the whole of the contents of the words of God directed against Egypt, in all of them is the destruction of the might of Pharaoh and Egypt as a world-power foretold. And this prophecy has been completely fulfilled. As Kliefoth has most truly observed, “one only needs to enter the pyramids of Egypt and its catacombs to see that the glory of the Pharaohs has gone down into Sheol. And it is equally certain that this destruction of the glory of ancient Egypt dates from the times of the Babylonio-Persian empire. ”

“ In the Old Testament prophecy, the idea of the new cosmos is blended with the millennium. It is only in the New Testament that the new creation intervenes as a party wall between this life and the life beyond; whereas the Old Testament prophecy brings the new creation itself into the present life, and knows nothing of any Jerusalem of the blessed life to come, as distinct from the new Jerusalem of the millennium. ”

“ Speak thus to them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, By my life, those who are in the ruins shall fall by the sword, and whoever is in the open field him do I give to the beasts to devour, and those who are in the fortresses and caves shall die of the pestilence. ”

“ But life extends no further than the water of salvation flows. Wherever it cannot reach, the world continues to life in death. The pools and swamps of the Dead Sea are still given up to salt. And lastly, the water of salvation also possesses the power to produce trees with leaves and fruits, by which the life called forth from death can be sustained and cured of all diseases. ”

“ When Israel shall thus serve the Lord its God, and walk in His commandments and statutes, it will enjoy the richest blessing from God. A spring of living water will issue from the threshold of the temple house, and, swelling after a short course into a mighty river, will flow down to the Jordan valley, empty itself into the Dead Sea, and make the water of that sea so wholesome that it will swarm with living creatures and fishes of every kind ”

“ The true restoration of Israel as the people of the Lord commenced with the founding of the new kingdom of God, the “kingdom of heaven,” through the appearing of Christ upon the earth. But inasmuch as the Jewish nation as such, or in its entirety, did not acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Messiah foretold by the prophets and sent by God, but rejected its Saviour, there burst afresh upon Jerusalem and the Jewish nation the judgment of dispersion among the heathen; whereas the kingdom of God founded by Christ spread over the earth, through the entrance of believers from among the Gentiles. ”

“ The New Testament does not teach anywhere that all the dead, even those who have fallen asleep in Christ, will remain in the grave, or in Hades, till the last judgment immediately before the destruction of heaven and earth, and that the souls which have entered heaven at their death will be with Christ till then unclothed and without the body. This traditional view merely rests upon the unscriptural idea of the coming of Christ as not taking place till the end of the ear, and as an act restricted to a single day of twenty-four hours. ”

“ For we find just the same despair at times when faith in the resurrection of the dead was a universally accepted dogma. The principal error connected with this view is the assumption that the vision was merely a parable formed by Ezekiel in accordance with the dogma of the resurrection of the dead. If, on the contrary, the vision was a spiritual intuition produced by God in the soul of the prophet, it might set forth the resurrection of the dead, even if the belief in this dogma had no existence as yet in the consciousness of the people, or at all events was not yet a living faith ”

“ Even if the name Gog be formed by Ezekiel in the freest manner from Magog, and however remote the peoples led by Gog from the ends of the earth to make war upon Israel, when restored and living in the deepest peace, may be; yet Magog, Meshech, Tubal, Pharaz, Cush, and Phut are not utopian nations, but the names of historical tribes of whose existence there is no doubt, although their settlements lie outside the known civilised world. ”

“ The only thing that still appears worthy of consideration is the circumstance that throughout the whole of Ezekiel's order of worship no allusion is made to the high priest, but the same holiness is demanded of all the priests which was required of the high priest in the Mosaic law. This points to the fact that the Israel of the future will answer to its calling to be a holy people of the Lord in a more perfect manner than in past times. In this respect the new temple will also differ from the old temple of Solomon. ”

“ To take plunder and to gather spoil, to bring back thy hand against the ruins that are inhabited again, and against a people gathered out of the nations, carrying on trade and commerce, who dwell on the navel of the earth. ”

“ In the Old Testament the whole of the national life of Israel in its several forms of manifestation, domestic and political life, labour and art, literature and culture, was regulated by religion, though only at first in an outward and legal way. The church, on the other hand, has, above all, to urge a renewal of the heart, and must give freedom to the outward forms which life assumes, enjoining upon the conscience of individual men, in these also to glorify Christ. ”

“ The river flows on into the barren, desolate waste of the Ghor, and finally into the Dead Sea, and makes the waters thereof sound, so that it swarms with fishes. The waste is a figure denoting the spiritual drought and desolation, and the Dead Sea a symbol of the death caused by sin. The healing and quickening of the salt waters of that sea, so fatal to all life, set forth the power of that divine salvation which conquers death, and the calling to life of the world sunk in spiritual death. ”

“ From this blessing they will learn that Jehovah their God is with them, and Israel is His people. The promise concludes in Eze 34:31 with these words, which set a seal upon the whole: “Ye are my flock, the flock of my pasture (lit., my pasture-flock; צאן , Jer 23:1, the flock fed by God Himself) ; men are ye, I am your God.” That these last words to not serve merely as an explanation of the figurative expression “flock,” is a fact of which no proof is needed. The figure of a flock was intelligible to every one. ”

“ The Judgment upon Pharaoh and His People and Land Because Pharaoh looks upon himself as the creator of his kingdom and of his might, he is to be destroyed with his men of war (Eze 29:2-5) . In order that Israel may no longer put its trust in the fragile power of Egypt, the sword shall cut off from Egypt both man and beast, the land shall be turned into a barren wilderness, and the people shall be scattered over the lands (Eze 29:5-12) . ”

“ In כּשׂמה, in Eze 35:14, כּ is a particle of time, as it frequently is before infinitives (e.g., Jos 6:20) , when all the earth rejoices, not “over thy desolation” (Hitzig) , which does not yield any rational thought, but when joy is prepared for all the world, I will prepare devastation for thee. Through this antithesis כּל־הארץ is limited to the world, with the exception of Edom, i.e., to that portion of the human race which stood in a different relation to God and His people from that of Edom ”

“ If the sweeping away of the population so connected with the stumbling, the people are devoured by the consequences of their sins, i.e., by the penal judgment, unfruitfulness, pestilence, and war, with which God threatened Israel for its apostasy from Him. These judgments had depopulated the land; and this fact was attributed by the heathen in their own way to the land, and thrown in the teeth of the Israelites as a disgrace. ”

“ For, as Kliefoth has correctly observed, “there are six heathen nations mentioned, viz., Asshur, Elam, Meshech-Tubal, Edom, the princes of the north, and Sidon; and if we add Egypt to the list, we shall have seven, which would be thoroughly adapted, as it was eminently intended, to depict the fate of universal heathenism.” A principle is also clearly discernible in the mode in which they are grouped. Asshur, Elam, and Meshech-Tubal represent the greater and more distant world-powers; Edom the princes of the north, and Sidon the neighbouring nations of Israel on both south and north. ”

“ God will draw the crocodile Pharaoh out of his Nile with hooks, and cast him upon the dry land, where he and the fishes that have been drawn out along with him upon his scales will not be gathered up, but devoured by the wild beasts and birds of prey. ”

“ But even if we overlook the contradiction involved in the supposition that the Israel believing in Christ of Romans 11 has sunk so deep that Jerusalem has to be trodden down by the heathen, and only a small portion of the worshippers of God are protected in the temple, we must nevertheless inquire how it is possible that the Israelitish church of believers in Christ should at the same time be defended in the temple at Jerusalem, and, having fled from Canaan into the wilderness, be concealed “in a place of distress and tribulation.” ”

“ For, since the heathen acknowledged only national gods, and regarded Jehovah as nothing more than such a national god of Israel, they did not look upon the destruction of the kingdom of Judah and the carrying away of the people as a judgment of the almighty and holy God upon His people, but concluded that that catastrophe was a sign of the inability of Jehovah to defend His land and save His people. ”

“ It is true that in Volck's opinion “we are to think of a glorification of nature;” but even this does not remove the difficulties which stand in the way of a literal interpretation of the temple spring. According to Eze 47:12, its waters posses the life-giving and healing power ascribed to them because they issue from the sanctuary. But how does the possession by the water of the power to effect the glorification of nature harmonize with its issuing from a temple in which bullocks, rams, calves, and goats are slaughtered and sacrificed? ”

“ The people of Israel, by their unrighteous admission of godless heathen into the temple, not only failed to show the proper reverence for the holy things of the Lord, but even made these heathen, so to speak, servants of God for themselves in His sanctuary. These last words are not to be understood literally, but spiritually. Allowing them to tread the temple is regarded as equivalent to appointing them to take charge of the worship in the temple. ”

“ God will give the sword into the hand of the king of Babylon, and equip and strengthen him to destroy the might of Pharaoh, that the latter may groan before him like one who is pierced with the sword. ”