Глава 24

Boiling cauldron. Wife's death On the day when Nebuchadnezzar began the siege of Jerusalem, around which all the prophet’s hitherto preaching revolved and the outcome of which was to show whether he prophesied the truth and open his mouth (v. 27; cf. Eze. 3.20), the prophet receives a revelation from God about this and, under the image of a cauldron from which the rust must be boiled away, presents the destruction of the city as the inevitable outcome of the siege (v. 1–14). At the same time, it was announced to him that his wife would suddenly die and that he should not mourn her as a sign of the numb horror with which the news of the fall of Jerusalem would fill the prophet’s fellow captives. This was the last prophecy about the destruction of Jerusalem, the last terrible prophecy; then the prophet, during the 1 1/2 year siege of Jerusalem, remains silent about Israel until the end of the siege (until Chapter XXXIII), devoting this break in the prophecy about Israel to prophecies about foreign nations. Ezek.24:1. And the word of the Lord came to me in the ninth year, in the tenth month, on the tenth day of the month: The first date after Ezek.20.1 is 3 years and 5 months later. According to us, January 587 BC. Ezek.24:2. son of man! write down for yourself the name of this day, this very day: on this very day the king of Babylon will approach Jerusalem. You need to write down the number in order to subsequently convince everyone of the accuracy of the prediction or God-communicated far-sight. The siege began on this day and according to 2 Kings 25.1 and Jer 52.4. Day under Zechariah Ave., approx. 518, was already honored by fasting (Zechariah 8.19). The opinion expressed by several rationalists that we are clearly dealing here with vaticinium ex eventu (prophecy after the event and on the basis of it) is refuted by people of the same camp, who agree to see here a fact of clairvoyance, similar to Schwadenborg's knowledge of the fire of Stockholm in 1759. Ezek.24:3. And speak a parable to the rebellious house, and say to them: Thus says the Lord God: Set up a pot, set it up and pour water into it; "To the rebellious house". The Prophet did not call Israel this way since Ezek.12.2. - “Parable”. as in Ezek.17.2; therefore, what is described further was not a symbolic action, to which opinion (Krechm.) can be given a reason by the commands, incl.: “put the boiler”, “pour water”. "Cauldron". For this parable, the prophet, therefore, used the comparison that he heard from the lips of those who remained in Jerusalem after Jehoiachin’s resettlement and which he refuted in Ezekiel 11.3, 7. Here he accepts their comparison to some extent: like them, he considers them meat boiling in a cauldron (and there the prophet, in spite of them, called those killed by them meat), but gives the comparison its application and an addition unfavorable for the authors: the meat from the cauldron will be thrown out (captivity), and the scum will be melted (beating up part of the population and burning the city). Ezek.24:4. put pieces of meat into it, all the best pieces, thighs and shoulders, and fill it with choice bones; “Pieces of meat” are the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Ezekiel clearly places his fellow tribesmen above these latter. “The best pieces (i.e.) of the thigh and shoulder” - the Jerusalem nobility. A mockery of the Jerusalemites' high opinion of themselves. “Selected bones” - for decoction - perhaps represent the military strength of the city: the bone is a symbol of fortress. Slav.: “cut off from the bones.” Ezek.24:5. Take choice sheep, and light the bones under it, and boil it until the bones are boiled in it. "And kindle (inserted by LXX) the bones underneath." The Scythians, according to Herodotus, used the bones of sacrificial animals for boiling meat; The gauchos of South America and the bakers of Africa, when there is a lack of firewood, burn with bones (Trosh.). One might assume that Heb. “etsem” - “bone” here arose from “ets” - “firewood”, if all the translations did not have “bones” here. - “So that the bones are boiled in it.” The fire under the cauldron (the flame of war) must be so strong. Ezek.24:6. Therefore thus says the Lord God: Woe to the city of blood! woe to the boiler that has scale in it and from which the scale does not come off! throw it out piece by piece, without choosing by lot. No matter how well the meat is cooked in the cauldron, it has spoiled due to the rust that covers the cauldron; therefore it must be thrown away indiscriminately. Jerusalem is so desecrated by the blood shed in it that people worthy of God's mercy cannot be there: they are, as it were, poisoned by its sinful atmosphere and must perish (from the sword and captivity) in the siege. Consequently, the Jerusalemites thought in vain (according to Ezek. 11.3, 7) that they, like meat in a cauldron, would be preserved in a besieged city: defiled with blood, like rust, the city must completely burn out in the fire of a siege, deprived of its entire population, in order to be subsequently clean. “The city of blood” – Ezek.22.2. "Scum": Heb. “gelata” – απ. λεγ ., glory. “poison”, ιος, rubigo (rust). Blood spilled in Jerusalem. - “Not choosing by lot.” In this catastrophe there will not be, as in the previous ones, happily escaped. Ezek.24:7. For his blood is in his midst; he left her on the bare rock; he did not spill it on the ground, where it might become covered with dust. Ezek.24:8. To arouse anger for revenge, I left his blood on the bare rock so that it would not hide. Addition to Ezek.22.2 and strengthening of the thought there. The prophet, with God-communicated sharpness of spiritual vision, penetrates into the mysterious essence of bloodshed as a sin. Although the passage can be explained in such a way that the blood was shed by the Jerusalemites too clearly, brazenly and shamelessly without the secrecy so natural in such a dark matter, which could, if not hide, then partially cover the sin in the eyes of the Lord, the direct idea of ​​the passage, although completely inexplicable and incomprehensible to us, is that the earth, absorbing the shed blood, in some way covers the crime; Wed the shedding of blood on the ground during sacrifice and Deut. 12.16; Lion. 17.13. – In LXX and in Art. 7. 1 l.: not “he”, but “I”, i.e. God. The words “on bare rock” are seen as a prophecy of Golgotha. Ezek.24:9. Therefore thus says the Lord God: Woe to the city of blood! and I will build a great fire. Having proved that Nebuchadnezzar's siege cannot be lifted, as they thought in Jerusalem (vv. 6–8), the prophet returns to the interrupted comparison of the city with a cauldron and develops it further. The fire under the cauldron must be very large: the siege is strong and stubborn. Ezek.24:10. Add wood, light the fire, boil the meat; let everything thicken and the bones burn out. "Boil the meat." Slav. closer to the context: “let the meat dry out”: so that the meat turns into liquid. “Let everything thicken” is a conjectural and one of several possible translations of an obscure Jewish saying, which is translated closer to the context into glory: “let... the yukha become scarce,” i.e., let all the liquid evaporate. “And the bones will burn out”, glory. stronger: “and the bones melt away.” The population of Jerusalem must all perish in the fire of the siege. The command to cook meat in a cauldron contradicts the command of Art. 6. throw the meat out of there; but the prophet, absorbed in thought, never develops a consistently and strictly begun comparison; the thought here and there is the same: the destruction of the wicked population of Jerusalem. Ezek.24:11. And when the cauldron is empty, place it on the coals so that it flares up, and so that its copper becomes hot, and its uncleanness melts in it, and all its scum disappears. When the contents of the cauldron have all been destroyed through strong boiling and evaporation (the population of Jerusalem through the siege), the cauldron must stand empty on the fire so that “its copper becomes red-hot” and “all its scum disappears.” The Prophet could not think that the heat could remove scale from the boiler (Krech.); although he does not say this directly in Hebrew. t. (according to LXX, it seems he says), but of course in this case the boiler will “disappear” with scale; this is what happened to Jerusalem after the siege (burned and destroyed by the Chaldeans); likewise, a house covered with leprosy must be destroyed: Lev. 14.34–35. Ezek.24:12. The work will be hard; but the great scum of it will not come off from it; and in the fire its scum will remain upon it. “The work will be hard...” The siege will be difficult, but it will not cleanse all the defilement of Jerusalem. Perhaps a hint that even after the restoration of Jerusalem many of the former vices remained in it. The Vulgate puts the past tenses: multo labore sudatum est (they worked hard on him); the question arose as to why the scale had not yet been cleared from the boiler; God put a lot of work into its cleansing (various trials - wars, disasters), but it is useless: non exivit de eo nimia rubigo, neque per ignem - its excessive rust did not come off even through fire (that is, through previous unfortunate wars and other trials). LXX in most codices they do not read the first sentence of the verse; but in glory it is in this form: “let his poison be humbled” - a repetition of the last thought of the previous one. verse (Ezekiel loves such repetitions). “And in the fire its scum will remain on it.” Lit.: “in the fire, scum it” - without a predicate; therefore, some translate it: “throw it into the fire!” Slav. “and his poison will be put to shame.” Ezek.24:13. Your uncleanness is such an abomination that no matter how much I clean you, you are still unclean; You will never be cleansed from your uncleanness until I satisfy My wrath over you. “There is such abomination in your uncleanness.” “Abomination” – Heb. "Zimma", coll. deceit; slav.: “dill”: your uncleanness is so deep that grass has grown on it. - “No matter how much I clean you.” Of course, all the providential influences of God on the Jews are understood: prophets, trials. - “And from now on you will not be cleansed until...”. Slav.: “And what will happen if you do not cleanse yourself” - if even now the court remains without action; - a thought, although not very likely in the mouth of Ezekiel, who, apparently, expects the final correction of Israel from captivity, but turned out to be true: after captivity, Israel was not alien to many additional shortcomings. Ezek.24:14. I am the Lord, I say: it will come and I will do it; I will not cancel, nor will I spare, nor will I have mercy. You will be judged according to your ways and according to your works, says the Lord God. “I won’t cancel” – glory. “I will not bite.” The following large addition is made to verse LXX: “for this reason I judge you by your blood and by your thoughts, I judge you, unclean, notorious and great for wrath”; although the thought here is not new (cf. v. 10), but the consideration that in the sacred. in the text, omissions were psychologically more possible than insertions, and the fact that the translation of LXX in the book of Ezekiel is distinguished by great accuracy makes many interpreters assume the originality of this addition, or at least not easily decide to deny its authenticity. Ezek.24:16. son of man! Behold, I will take from you with a wound the joy of your eyes; but don’t complain and don’t cry, and don’t let tears come out of you; "Ulcer". Heb. "maggefa" must mean sudden death (strike? Vulg. plaga). - “The joy of your eyes” - as can be seen from Art. 18, wife. The only place that throws light on the personal relationships and family life of the prophet. “Rarely has God humbled his servants so much as to deprive him of a wife for no other reason than to use it to mimic the fate of the people,” says Gengstenberg, and on this basis he disputes the reality of what is described here, considering it all a parable. But the prophet does not say that God would strike his wife with death for this purpose: she died at the time predetermined for her and God ordered the prophet only to use her death for symbolic purposes. This command to the prophet could meet his spiritual needs: loving his wife with such strength as he showed here, he could only be burdened by the complex rituals of mourning her. "Don't complain and don't cry." The first can mean natural weeping, and the second, used when mourning, cries and lamentations (Jer 22.18). - “And don’t let your tears come out.” Severe grief deprives a person of tears, which ease suffering. Ezekiel 24:17. sigh in silence, do not cry for the dead; But bind yourself with a bandage, and put on your shoes your feet, and do not cover your beard, and do not eat bread from strangers. “Sigh in silence, do not cry for the dead.” The plural here is unexpected and can only be explained in the sense of mourning, which is usually done for the dead. Slav.: “Arise in silence, there is a groan in the blood, there is a cry in the loins,” i.e., the groan of one blood, an internal cry, is also possible; – the expression “there are tears in the loins” doublet “groaning of the blood” (translation of the same Hebrew phrase, read differently); “loins” came from the reading of Heb. “matim” - “dead” as “matnaim” - “loins”, therefore, the plural confused here and LXX. The following are a list of Jewish signs of mourning that a prophet should not allow. 1) “Tie a bandage around yourself.” As a sign of mourning, the bandages were removed from the head, which, going down to the eyelids, surrounded the head; Vulg. corona; maybe the current skull cap is from there. During the bliss. Jerome was mistakenly seen here as talking about phylactery. The bandages may have been removed in exchange for initially sprinkling ashes on the head. Slav.: “Let your gossip be upon you” - combed; in Art. 23 is no longer intertwined: “and your hair will be on your heads,” that is, they will not be shaved. 2) “And put shoes on your feet.” As a sign of mourning, they walked barefoot, thus exposing the bottom of the body, as well as the top - the head, or - out of fear of disrespect for the spirit of the deceased, who was invisibly present near the person close to him. 3) “And don’t cover your beard”; what they did (as in leprosy) may have been as a sign of sad silence and instead of the ancient cutting of the beard (cf. Eze. 7.18). LXX, reading differently Heb. expression, they have: “and do not be comforted by their lips,” that is, do not accept official consolations and visits for this purpose. 4) “And do not eat bread from strangers” - bread that relatives or friends brought to the house of mourning as a sign of compassion, perhaps to remind him of nutrition or to give him the opportunity to eat clean food; perhaps the remnant of a meal for the dead, in which the dead, according to the old belief, took an invisible part; Vulg.: cibos lugentium - “mourning bread.” Ezek.24:18. And after I had spoken the word to the people in the morning, in the evening my wife died, and the next day I did as I was commanded. “I spoke the word of the Lord to the people in the morning” - perhaps the revelation of vv. 1–14. - “The next day,” when they came to the prophet with an expression of condolences, which could only be done the next day, since death followed in the evening. - “Did” - here is the same thing that he didn’t do - signs of mourning. Ezek.24:19. And the people said to me: Won't you tell us what the significance of what you are doing is for us? The people are so accustomed to looking for symbolism in all the actions of the prophet. What is characteristic here is “for us”: the people already look at themselves as the prophet’s flock. Ezekiel 24:20. And I said to them, The word of the Lord came to me: “The word of the Lord came to me.” Usually: “it came to me.” It may mean a time long past. Ezek.24:21. Say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I will give my sanctuary, the stronghold of your strength, the joy of your eyes, and the delight of your soul, to reproach; and your sons and your daughters, whom you have forsaken, will fall by the sword. What a wife was to Ezekiel, a church is to the Jews. The epithets are not too strong, considering that Israel stood and fell along with the church (Smend). Moreover, these proudly tender epithets express the attitude of the prophet himself towards the church; Wed Ezek.7.22; Jer 7.4; Mic 3.11 et seq. - “The joy of your soul”, slav.: “them your souls will spare” (that you so protect): Heb. απ. λεγ. "makhmal" LXX was read as "mahmad". – Of the numerous losses of Israel during the fall of the kingdom of Judah, the prophet points out only two of the most and equally dear: the church and children. Moreover, for the ancient Jew, religion and nationality (the preservation of which was determined by posterity) were one and the same. It is very possible that Ezekiel’s fellow captives did not take their children with them to Babylonia in the hope of a better future, so as not to expose them to the dangers and hardships of resettlement; Perhaps only those who were forced to go were captured. If so, then the separation of sons from fathers in the XVIII chapter. their fate had a historical basis for Ezekiel. Ezek.24:22. And you will do the same as I did; You will not cover your beards, and you will not eat bread from strangers; Ezek.24:23. and your bandages shall be on your heads, and your sandals on your feet; You will not mourn and cry, but you will melt away from your sins and sigh one another. Ezek.24:22–23 16–17. See there. The difference in glory. from Russian: instead of: “bandages…” - “your hair is on your heads” - they will not cut their hair; otherwise glory. in 17th century Ezek.24:24. And Ezekiel will be a sign to you: everything that he did, you will do also; and when this comes to pass, you will know that I am the Lord God. The name of the prophet is mentioned for the second and last time in the book. The importance of the moment. Slav. "miracle" is inaccurate instead of "sign". Ezek.24:25. As for you, son of man, on the day when I take from them the ornament of their glory, the joy of their eyes, and the joy of their souls, their sons and their daughters, “Ornament of glory,” etc. – church; Wed Art. 21. In glory. more precisely 4 epithets. Ezek.24:26. on that day one who has escaped from there will come to you to bring news to your ears. "The Survivor". A terrible omission; cf Ezek.14.22. "In your ears". What God has said so far to the mind and spirit of the prophet, he will then hear with his bodily ears. It was fulfilled in 1.5 years (Ezek.33.21), if it was predicted on the day of Art. 1. Ezekiel 24:27. On that day, when he is saved, your mouth will be opened, and you will speak, and you will no longer remain silent, and you will be a sign to them, and they will know that I am the Lord. The news of the fall of Jerusalem stopped the periodic numbness imposed on the prophet from above (Ezek. 3.26–27), as now superfluous: thanks to this news, the prophet’s fellow captives became more sensitive to his speeches, and his speeches became more pleasant for them, comforting; a bright period of the prophet’s activity began in all respects, when he became, thanks to his prophecies so precisely fulfilled, recognized as a prophet, when they began to listen to his voice and thanks to this he became a sign of God, a “miracle” (glory translation) for the people (Zechariah 3.8). You might be interested in: