Bible Commentaries

Ezekiel 32:1; Ezekiel 32:17

Calling to mind my ordination this day eleven years ago, I spent some hours in the afternoon in the wood, reviewing the past, confessing sin, seeking mercy through the blood of the Lamb, who has a fold of righteousness to spread over a minister's sins. Some brokenness of heart and some power to cry for future blessing. I see Ezekiel got some of his messages in his twelfth year! May the Lord God of Ezekiel remember me!

—Dr. A. A. Bonar's Diary, p143.

References.—XXXII:1.—J. Baldwin Brown, The Soul's Exodus and Pilgrimage, p178.

Ezekiel 32:8

"This in good measure," said Newman, quoting the verse in a sermon preached in1841 , "has fallen upon us. The Church of God is under eclipse among us. Where is our unity, for which Christ prayed? Where our charity, which He enjoined? Where the faith once delivered, when each has his own doctrine? Where our visibility, which was to be a light to the world? Where that awful worship, which struck fear into every soul? And as the Jews shortly before their own rejection had two dark tokens—the one, a bitter contempt of the whole world, and the other, multiplied divisions and furious quarrels at home—so we English, as if some abomination of desolation were coming on us also, scorn almost all Christianity but our own; and yet have, not one, but a hundred gospels among ourselves, and each of them with its own hot defenders."

Ezekiel 32:24

The Duke of Weimar told his friends always, To be of courage: this Napoleonism was unjust, a falsehood, and could not last. It is true doctrine. The heavier this Napoleon trampled on the world, holding it tyrannously down, the fiercer would the world's recoil against him be, one day. Injustice pays itself with frightful compound interest.

—Carlyle, Heroes, vi.

References.—XXXIII:1-20 , 30 , 33.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxviii. No2286. XXXIII:5.—Ibid. vol. iv. No165. XXXIII:7.—A. Rowland, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxv1904 , p324.