Ezekiel 30:1-3, 7 The word of the LORD came again to me, saying,… To what extent we are to take the prophet's description of the "woe" that was to overtake Egypt in a strictly external sense must (as said before on Ezekiel 29:16) depend on our principle of biblical interpretation, together with our reading of ancient history. For the purpose of religious edification it is enough that we accept these words as a picture of the desolation to which a course of guilt, whether national or individual, may be expected to lead. I. NATIONAL DESOLATION. Of this Ezekiel furnishes, in the whole chapter, a most graphic picture. 1. Prosperity (fullness) departs, and there is no more boast of its great population (Ver. 10). 2. Violent death lays numbers of its people low; the land is "filled with the slain" (Vers. 4, 11). 3. Its hope, in the person of its young men, is slain (Ver. 17). 4. Its beauty, its pride, in the person of its daughters, is removed (Ver. 18). 5. Its physical resources are dried up (Ver. 12). 6. Its natural leaders are lost to it (ver 13). 7. Its religious institutions are broken up (Ver. 13). 8. Its allies and dependencies are dragged down with it to the ground (Vers. 5, 6); "its yokes are broken" (Ver. 18). 9. Its people are stricken with dismay; instead of its ancient pride and pomp (Ver. 18), fearfulness fills the heart of its inhabitants (Ver. 13); a cloud of dire misfortune throws the whole country into dark shadow (Vers. 3, 18). The final, comprehensive touch is in the language of the text. 10. Desolation in the midst of desolation. It does not appear that Egypt ever presented so desperate a scene as this; and we may understand either (1) that God, for some sufficient reason, forbore to visit the land with the last extremity of woe (see Jonah 3:4, 10); or (2) that the language of the prophecy is to be taken as hyperbolical, and thus interpreted. But we must also understand that (3) the ultimate issue of collective (national) iniquity is destruction, desolation; witness the cities of the plain, Nineveh, Babylon, Jerusalem. The "day" of sin and of defiance, of tyrannical power and guilty gratification may last long, but its sun is sure to set in dark clouds, and when the morrow comes, as it will come, there will be a day of dire and widespread desolation. "Woe worth the day!" when it arrives. II. THE DESOLATION OF THE SPIRIT. 1. In what it is found. Spiritual desolation is experienced when all that is really precious to the human soul is broken up and has departed. When (1) the good habits of devotion and of virtue, formed in childhood, have become loosened and have given way; (2) the soul has lost its faith in the providence, the nearness, the notice, and perhaps even the being of God; (3) the man has become separated, both in sympathy and in action, from those with whom he once walked and worshipped; (4) hope of future blessedness has left the heart bare of all expectancy beyond the grave, and the future is nothing but a blank; (5) life has lost all its sacredness, and therefore nearly all its worth. This sad desolateness of son culminates in (6) the loss of all self-respect, and in (7) the extension of the same spiritual waste to those who are within range of its influence; when one is "desolate in the midst of desolation." 2. How it may be averted. "None of them that trust in him shall be desolate," says the psalmist (Psalm 35:22). The fear of God, walking in the light of his truth, communion with Jesus Christ and association with his friends and followers, the daily prayer for the restraining and the prompting influences of the Spirit of God, - this will secure the soul from loss and from decline. He who lives thus will not enter even the outer shadow of this calamity. 3. The way of deliverance. Men once thought that there was no way for a human soul to ascend from the pit of spiritual ruin to the lofty levels of holy service and sacred joy and immortal hope. We think thus no more now that he has spoken to us who has said, "I am the Way." - C. Parallel Verses KJV: The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying, |
    |