Глава 12

1–7. The captivity of Zedekiah and the people, represented in symbolic action. 8–16. Explanation of this symbolic action. 17–20. The disasters of the siege represented in symbolic action. 21–25. The irrevocability of prophetic predictions. 26–28. The immediate proximity of their execution. Ezek.12:1. And the word of the Lord came to me: There is no date specified either for this revelation or for a number of those that follow until Ezekiel 20.1, where the date is 7th year 5th month of captivity, i.e. the reign of Zedekiah; next, all the revelations of chapters XII-XIX should fall on these 11 months of the 7-6 year of Zedekiah (591-590 BC). On this basis, the speeches of these chapters are combined into one (4th) section of the book, which is aimed at the immediate justification and confirmation of what was described first in IV-VII, and then in VIII-XI chapters. catastrophe, justification caused by the people's disbelief in Ezekiel's predictions (Ezekiel 12.2, 22). Ezek.12:2. son of man! you live in the midst of a rebellious house; they have eyes to see, but they do not see; they have ears to hear, but they do not hear; because they are a rebellious house. The beginning of the chapter takes us to a slightly later time: the prophet seems to be speaking under the impression of new bitter experiments made on the captives; the failure of the previous sermon, apparently, was the reason for new revelations; not only the Jerusalemites, but also the Babylonian colonists, who were less inclined towards them, somehow did not believe in the imminent fall of Judea. - “Among the rebellious house.” Deliberately without explanation, as familiar and repeatedly mentioned (Ezek. 2.5, etc.), not as in Art. 9, where explanation is less necessary. LXX for some reason: “in the midst of untruths,” perhaps according to Lev. 16.16. - “There are eyes to see and they do not see,” etc. since Deuteronomy 29.4 it has become a favorite expression among the prophets: Isaiah 6:9; Jer 5.21; Mark 8.18. Ezek.12:3. But you, son of man, prepare for yourself what you need to move, and in the middle of the day move before their eyes, and move from your place to another place before their eyes; perhaps they will understand, although they are a rebellious house; “Necessary for resettlement”, slav. “captive vessels,” that is, there must be a staff, sandals, a belt, a bag of supplies, a bottle of water (as Assyrian images of captive caravans show), and maybe part of the household utensils. - “In the middle of the day, move before their eyes.” The command is repeated three times (the LXX, however, does not have a second “move”) as a sign of special persistence. But in this verse this command is given in general terms and in essential terms: prepare things, carry out an operation during the day, move to another place. The details are given in the following verses. This must be kept in mind for a correct understanding of the expression: “move in the middle of the day.” As the next verse shows, preparations for the migration must only be made during the day, and it itself must take place in the evening; but since preparations are the most important thing here, it could be said about the entire relocation that it should be carried out during the day. - “Move from your place to another place.” Not from Tel Aviv to another settlement, because in st. 8 the prophet is again in Tel Aviv, and not out of town or to another house, but only to play the migrating person, carry things, etc., as is explained in detail in the following verses. - “Perhaps they will understand.” The expression sounds more hopeful of success than the similar one in calling: “will they listen or will they not.” Ezek.12:4. and take out your things, as things needed for relocation, during the day, before their eyes, and you yourself go out in the evening before their eyes, as they go out for relocation. The verse, like 5-6, is the general command of v. 3. describes in particulars and details. The prophet must take out of the house during the day, in front of the neighbors, the things indicated in the explanation of Art. 3. and put them in front of the house in the form in which they are taken on the road (“as things needed for relocation”), i.e. tied and packed. And the prophet himself must leave the house for relocation only in the evening, either because when the cool of the evening sets in, travel generally begins in the east, or so that preparations for a whole day’s journey will attract more attention from those around him, or most likely as a sign of Zedekiah’s night flight (v. 12). - “As they go out for resettlement,” famous: “Like a captive goes out,” that is, equipped with the most necessary things and expressing depression and grief. Ezek.12:5. Before their eyes, break a hole in the wall for yourself and carry it out through it. “In the wall,” of course, at home, because a city or courtyard wall would be more accurately defined; and Tel Aviv hardly had a wall. For the meaning of the image, see Art. 12. “And bring it out through him,” that is, other things, perhaps smaller ones; this was the most difficult thing, why can only this be mentioned, and not about the prophet passing through the gap; the absence of an addition, however, it is strange why the LXX, Targum, Peshito and Vulgate: “and let you go out”; and the things were taken out during the day, Art. 4. Ezek.12:6. Before their eyes, take the burden on your shoulder, carry it out in the dark, cover your face so as not to see the ground; for I have made you a sign for the house of Israel. “Take the burden on your shoulder.” Word: “they were taken on their shoulders,” that is, the prophet had to be carried on their shoulders; glory the reading is doubtful (why did they have to carry the prophet?) and arose, perhaps, due to the fact that things were taken out of the house during the day; but here we are talking about further carrying them to another place. "In the Dark". Heb. the word (“alata”), used only in Gen. 15.17, means thick, night darkness; slav.: “pokroven”, and in 7 tbsp. the same word "otay". - “Take it out,” that is, take it some distance from the house. - “Hide your face” - out of shame, or so as not to be recognized, or as a sign of Zedekiah’s blindness; Wed Art. 12. - “To the House of Israel,” that is, to the immediate fellow-migrants of the prophet, who could see all this, and then to all of Israel, who had ever learned about such accurate and faithful predictions of the prophet. Ezek.12:7. And I did as I was commanded; I carried out my things, as things needed for relocation, during the day, and in the evening I broke a hole in the wall with my hand, carried out the burden in the dark and lifted it onto my shoulder before their eyes. A detailed story about the fulfillment of God’s command wants to note the accuracy of execution. - “By hand.” According to EUR without a member, therefore, does not mean: without the help of a weapon (for example, so that it would not be heard or from haste), but with one’s own hand or with force (as in Isaiah 28.2): without a weapon it was hardly possible to break through the wall: “Ezekiel did not live in Japan” (Krechm.): in some. Greek No. Ezek.12:8. And the word of the Lord came to me in the morning: The strange actions of the prophet, who had already previously occupied an exceptional position among his fellow villagers and attracted their amazed, if not frightened, gazes, could not but attract their attention and not generate rumors. Therefore, the prophet, the very next morning after a night, most of which must have passed in symbolic wandering, receives from God for publication (cf. v. 10) an explanation of his symbolic action. Consequently, the prophet himself had to perform this action without understanding its meaning, although perhaps he saw some insight into it: the previous symbolic actions were explained to him by God before they were performed. Ezek.12:9. son of man! Did not the house of Israel, the rebellious house, say to you, “What are you doing?” The question of the compatriots, as shown by the epithet “rebellious house”, already used again and, moreover, as a definition, was caused not so much by serious curiosity and the search for edification, but by a naive thirst for something new and mocking curiosity: cf. in Ezek. 24:19, 20:43, 21:7, where the attitude towards the prophet is already more serious. Ezek.12:10. Tell them, “This is what the Lord God says: This is a foreshadowing for the ruler in Jerusalem and for all the house of Israel that is there.” “This is a foreshadowing for the ruler in Jerusalem,” that is, for Zedekiah, whom Ezekiel calls king (“melek”) only in Ezek.7.27, and in other places, as here, only “prince,” “nasi”: Eze.21:25, 19:1, perhaps considering him unworthy of the first title (cf. Eze.1.2 and Eze.17.12 about Jeconiah - “melek”), which the prophet attaches to the Messiah (Ezek.37.22–24) and in general is the usual name for the king, also about Nebuchadnezzar, king of Tire, Egypt in XXVI-XXIX chapters); and in the future theocracy, Israel will have only “nasi”: Eze.44.3, etc. “Prediction for the ruler” in Heb. consonance: “gannasi - gammasa”, coll.: “prince - threat”, glav.: “to the prince and elders”. - “And for all the house of Israel, which ... there,” that is, in Jerusalem. The expression is somewhat strange, and the last definition seems unnecessary; Perhaps the prophet is making it clear that the eyes of all Israel are now turned to Jerusalem, which is considered the only representative of the house of Israel. Ezek.12:11. Say: I am a sign for you; Whatever I do will happen to them; they will go into exile and into captivity. The sign applies primarily to the captives (taking away from them the hope of a speedy return to their homeland), although it will only be fulfilled on those remaining in Jerusalem; hence the 2nd and 3rd person in pronouns. Ezek.12:12. And the commander who is among them, in the dark, will lift the burden onto his shoulder and go out. The wall will be broken to send him through; he will cover his face, so that he will not see this land with his eyes. From the fate of the people he moves on to the fate of the king. “The commander” is Zedekiah (v. 10). - “Among them” of them. The fate of the king will be different from that of his subjects. – “In the Dark” – Zedekiah’s flight from the besieged city occurred at night. - “Raises”, which is not said in Hebrew; It may of course mean something from property, or: sin and curse. LXX: “will be taken on the shoulders,” i.e., of beasts of burden or of one’s own compatriots; Such details are not conveyed in the story of Zedekiah's flight. - “And it will come out.” The king leaves his capital, causing the death of the people. – “They will break down the wall,” that is, those surrounding Zedekiah (LXX – singular). In 2 Kings 25.4; Jer 39.4, 52.7 say that Zedekiah fled “through the king’s garden into the gate between the two walls,” that is, it must have been through the gate that led from the king’s garden to the south. V. the corner of the city wall outside the city, because all the large gates were guarded by the besiegers; the gate, perhaps built during the siege, was probably secret, which explains the prophet’s expression: the king, who always entered the city solemnly through the main gate, now must flee through the backyard like a criminal. - “He will cover his face” - incognito, perhaps an indication of blindness. – “This land” – Palestine; not only her, however, but also the land of captivity, which will be discussed in Art. 13. Ezek.12:13. And I will spread My net over him, and he will be caught in My snare, and I will take him to Babylon, to the land of the Chaldeans, but he will not see her, and there he will die. The captivity of Zedekiah is represented under the guise of his being hunted by the Lord, a comparison intended to express the great wrath of God against this king, mainly, as chap. XVII, for his treachery and perjury against Nebuchadnezzar. The comparison is very strong and beloved in Ezekiel (Ezek.17:20, 16, 19:6, 32:3), but not new: Hos. 7.12; Jer 18.22; Lamentations 1:13, 4:20. As the Lord himself in ch. IV besieges Jerusalem, so here the Chaldeans are only executors of His will. God takes away from the king any opportunity to escape from the Chaldeans. - “To Babylon”. This is, therefore, the “other place” of Art. 3. - “But he will not see her,” Chaldean land. With a skillful and truly prophetic mystery that is hardly resolvable for the listeners, the blindness of Zedekiah is predicted. - “And he will die there.” Goes beyond the symbolic effect of Art. 3–7. Ezek.12:14. And I will scatter all those who are around him, his followers and all his army to all the winds, and I will draw a sword after them. The fate of Sedekiin's army. “Spobornikov” is the nearest army. - “The whole army.” Heb. the word "agad", found only in Ezekiel and related to Arabic, Aramaic and Assyrian roots, means "detachments of troops"; slav.: “those who intercede.” – “I will dispel...” see Ezek.5.12. Ezek.12:15. And they will know that I am the Lord, when I have scattered them among the nations and scattered them throughout the lands. The fate of the people. “By nations...by lands” see explanation. Ezek.5.5. Ezek.12:16. But I will preserve a small number of them from sword, famine and pestilence, so that they will tell the nations to whom they go about all their abominations; and they will know that I am the Lord. The purpose of God's punishment, as well as the merciful preservation of a small number (glorified: “men in number”) of Israel always remains the same: knowledge of God (cf., for example, Eze. 6:7, 7, etc.), so that they would know that it was not out of powerlessness that God did this to Israel, but because of abominations, and not only the Israelis themselves knew this (cf. Eze. 14.21, etc.), but also the pagans: this is a novelty of the present place in comparison with the previous parallel ones; and it should be noted that Ezekiel does not seem to expect anything more than such recognition from the pagans (in the near future): Ezekiel 17:24, 25:5, 14, 30:13, 32:14; however – Ezek.16.53. Three punishments: sword, famine and plague are the same as in Chapter V. Ezek.12:18. son of man! eat your bread with trembling, and drink your water with trembling and sorrow. Described in v. 17–20. symbolic action parallel to Ezek.4.10 et c.; repetition is a feature of Ezekiel. This symbolic action, as always happens when repeated by the prophet Ezekiel, makes a significant addition to Ezekiel 4:10 et seq.: the food of the besieged and captives will not only be meager and disgusting, but will be taken with fearful haste, which the prophet must depict on his face during the acceptance of what was commanded in Chapter IV. food. Consequently, the real symbolic action required good facial expressions from the prophet to perform it and was almost heavier (Kretschmar) than the previous ones: “bread” and “water” can mean any type of food in general. - “Your water.” The pronoun is due to the correspondence “your bread”:; most Greek and Ezek. 4.11 do not have pronouns, in 19 v. it is there again. Ezek.12:19. And say to the people of the land: This is what the Lord God says about the inhabitants of Jerusalem, about the land of Israel: they will eat their bread with sorrow and drink their water in despondency, because the land will be deprived of all its abundance because of the iniquity of all those living on it. “The people of the earth” usually means the entire population of the country (2 Kings 21.24) or the common people (Ezek. 22.29); so here, too, he can be understood as a subject of the king who has been discussed so far; although the prophet no longer lives among them and cannot in the proper sense speak (“tell”) to them, the liveliness with which he follows the fate of the fatherland allows him to see its representatives in his fellow tribesmen; Moreover, he writes for a time when everyone should realize what the prophet told them. - “Because” glory. more precisely: “as if yes”, “so that”. The whole tragedy will be that the people of Jerusalem and the Jews in general, by their final confusion from fear, themselves must help ensure that their evil fate befalls them all the more quickly. - “His land”, i.e. Jerusalem; LXX without a pronoun. – “Abundance” – inhabitants, works, wealth. - “For iniquities...” Ps 106.34. Ezek.12:20. And the inhabited cities will be laid waste, and the earth will become desolate, and you will know that I am the Lord. Wed. Jer 4:27, 9:11. “It should be noted that at the same time Jeremiah prophesied in Jerusalem, and Ezekiel in Babylonia, and the prophecies of the first were sent to the captives, and the second to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that one could be convinced of the providence of one in different countries of God” (Blessed Jerome). Ezek.12:21. And the word of the Lord came to me: Before Ezek.14.11 there are a number of speeches about true and false prophecy, which must have been caused by an ever-increasing distrust of prophetic predictions. This mistrust was caused by 1) the slowness of the fulfillment of prophecies; 2) the multiplication of false prophets; 3) improper use of true prophecies. The first subject is devoted to two revelations in Chapter XII: Ezek.12.21–25 and Ezek.12.26–28, the first of which, directed mainly against the Jews who remained in their homeland, speaks of the immutability of predictions, the second - against the captives - of the imminence of their fulfillment, but both revelations are closely related to each other because the slow, not with the current generation, fulfillment of God’s threats is equivalent for this latter would be their complete non-fulfillment. Ezek.12:22. son of man! What kind of saying do you have in the land of Israel: “Many days will pass, and all prophetic vision will disappear”? As in other places (Ezek. 8:12, 16:44, 18:12, cf. Jer. 5:12, 17:5) he loves to do this, the prophet, to characterize those to whom he addresses, uses a phrase borrowed from the people’s lips, which he calls a proverb, glory. more precisely: “parable”, in the sense of a current image of an expression that is strongly impressed in the shortest and most concise form possible. Perhaps Jeremiah's long-term proclamation of the destruction of the city and church gave rise to the real saying. - “The vision will disappear”, glory. "perish". The word, especially solemnly pronounced, as an oath, curse, prediction, in ancient times had much greater significance than now, for it was considered a living force that entails fulfillment; the word of God was indeed such power (1 Sam. 3.19; Ps. 145.4); therefore, if it was not fulfilled, then it could be expressed as a known reality that it perished. Ezek.12:23. Therefore tell them: Thus says the Lord God: I will destroy this proverb, and they will no longer use such a proverb among Israel; but tell them: the days are near and the fulfillment of every prophetic vision. The Lord speaks out with anger against such speeches, for they constitute an insult to His name, and He cannot endure such things any longer; soon what He threatens will come, and then those skeptics will experience for themselves what Jehovah spoke through the prophets. "Every Vision Fulfilled" ; glory more precisely: “the word, that is, the essence, of every vision.” Ezek.12:24. For no longer will any prophetic vision be in vain, and no foretelling will be false in the house of Israel. Slav. gives another thought for this verse: Israel will no longer have false prophets and sorcerers. Both of them, due to the fact that their predictions did not come true, were the main reason for the weakening of faith in true prophecies. Therefore, to restore this faith, and with it the honor of God himself, who predicted through the true prophets, it is necessary, in addition to the speedy fulfillment of the prophecy, to eradicate the false prophets; thus this verse indicates a second means to that end for which v. 23. indicates the first remedy. Ezek.12:25. For I am the Lord, I speak; and the word that I speak will be fulfilled, and will not be delayed; In your days, O rebellious house, I have spoken the word, and I will bring it to pass, says the Lord God. All false predictions will cease to give way to one word of God. Instead of contrasting the false prophets, which are spoken of (according to the Glorious text) in article 24, with the true ones, Jehovah contrasts the first with Himself. – “I say” 1 and 2 glory. more precisely, “I will entrust.” – “It will not be postponed,” cases of which have previously taken place, thanks to the long-suffering of God, who often made only conditional threats and hoped for the conversion of the people (Jer. 18.7 and Joel 2.14; Jon. 3.9); now long-suffering is exhausted. - “In your days.” The fulfillment of the prophecies must come very soon, and those who hear the latter must also see the first during their lifetime. With this, the prophet proceeds to analyze another saying, which he must have often heard from the captives; hence the transition to 2 liters. pl. h. That the fulfillment of the word of God will affect the modern generation, Ezekiel draws attention to this all the more insistently, the more general speeches that prophecy has no valid force were applied to him. Ezek.12:27. son of man! behold, the house of Israel says, “The prophetic vision which he saw will come to pass after many days, and he prophesies of times far off.” This speech should no longer be directed against the people of Jerusalem, but against the prophet’s fellow tribesmen (among whom there were also false prophets: Jer. 29.8 and Eze. 13.1); here, as there, Ezekiel's preaching meets with a frivolous attitude and misunderstanding; but the obvious mockery that sounds in v. 22 is no longer here; listeners reassure themselves only by the remoteness of the prophecy, which, without affecting them, has no real existence for them. The anonymous (“he”) whose prophecy finds no serious faith is none other than Ezekiel. Ezek.12:28. Therefore tell them: Thus says the Lord God: None of My words will be delayed any more, but the word that I speak will come to pass, says the Lord God. “Not one of My words will be delayed any more”, glory: “All My words will not continue to this end” - sounds eschatological. You might be interested in: