Bible Commentaries

Ezekiel 10:8

I. See what a Divine work creation is. Here, in this human hand beneath the angel's wing, do we see the procedure of the Divine work. All God's most beautiful things are related to use. Beauty and use are God's two anointed ministers to the world. In the gospel of utilitarianism, there is the hand without the wing; in the gospel of mysticism there is no man's hand under the wings.

II. See what Divine providence is. Man is the one manifold. (1) In the multiplicity of Divine operations we see the human hand beneath the angel's wing. From His exalted concealment God is constantly energizing by the human hand. This in all ages has been. (2) And is not our redemption a hand, the human hand beneath the Divine wing—a hand stretched out, the "likeness of a man's hand beneath the cherubim"? What is the humanity of Jesus, but the human hand beneath the Divine wing? (3) This thought rebukes the many false modern notions of God. See in this God's own picture of His providence, and never be it ours to divorce that human from the Divine in God's being.

III. See in the human hand beneath the wing of the angel, the relation of a life of action to a life of contemplation. In our most exalted flights we need the human hand. And by the hand understand deeds,—they administer even by bodily administration; but the hands under the wings show how they surpass the deeds of their action by the excellence of their contemplation.

IV. In a word, see what religion is. It is the human hand beneath the angel's wing. Has your religion a hand in it? It is practical, human, sympathetic. Has it a wing? It is lofty, unselfish, inclusive, Divine. Has it a hand? How does it prove itself? By embracing this hand, laying hold upon, by works. Has it a wing? How does it prove itself? By prayer, by faith, by heaven.

E. Paxton Hood, Preacher's Lantern, vol. i., p. 321.

Reference: Ezekiel 10:8.—Homiletic Magazine; vol. x., p. 203.

Ezekiel 10:13

(Ezekiel 37:9)

If the wheel be taken as representing the whole scheme and fabric of nature, geological, astronomical, and elemental; and the breath, as the secret of life and motion, you have a philosophical conception of the universe. But if you contemplate the mechanism of nature, apart from the intelligence and vitality of the breath, your unphilosophical method of thought will confound your reason, and make the rational apprehension of anything an impossibility.

I. Consider the mystery of evil as included in the great whole and circuit of universal existence. Let us learn to contemplate the fall and the death of man, together with his new birth and resurrection, his ascension and glorification, as comprehended in the wheel of God. "O wheel!" Oh, endless round, from God, into the limitations and weaknesses of selfhood, into the mistakes and wilfulnesses of selfhood, and thence into exhausted powers, into weariness and suffering, and through weariness and suffering into reconciliation to the redeeming mercies of eternal love, and then onward and onward through successive purgations and renewals, towards rest and home in the fixed righteousness and blessedness of the Divine-human, the eternal-human, life.

II. What the human soul, all the world over, needs is not to be harangued, however eloquently, about the old accepted religion; but to be permeated, charmed, and taken captive, by a warmer and more potent breath of God than they ever felt before. The Divine breath is as exquisitely adapted to the requirements of the soul's nature as a June morning to the planet. Nor does the morning breath leave the trees freer to delight themselves and develop themselves under its influence, than the breath of God allows each human mind to unfold according to its genius. Nothing stirs the central wheel of the soul like the breath of God. The whole man is quickened, his senses are new senses, his emotions new emotions, his reason, his affections, his imagination, are all newborn; the change is greater than he knows, he marvels at the powers in himself which the breath is opening and calling forth.

J. Pulsford, Our Deathless Hope, p. 278.

Reference: Ezekiel 11:5.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. x., No. 591.