Commentary on Ezekiel Chapters 1-20 John Calvin
JOHN CALVIN
Prophet's context to receive it as if God were the speaker: besides, it is not necessary to change the tense of the verb, and take the past for the future, when the sense tends in another direction. It agrees far better that the Jews did not recall to mind their own abominations so as to be displeased with them. To make consideration, means to reflect upon. {,}זמהzemeh, is mostly taken in a good sense, and signifies consideration simply; and as this is the word's proper meaning, we see that the Prophet here accuses the Jews of stupidity, because they did not turn their attention to reconsider their abominations. Those who take it for lewdness distort the sense.
The whole meaning is, that the Jews were worthy of the horrible destruction which hung over them, because they were not only obstinate in their ingratitude, but altogether stupid: for their abominations were so foul before the nations, as we have formerly seen, that the daughters of the Philistines were ashamed of the wickedness of the nation, but they did not apply their minds to the consideration of these things.
Since, therefore, their abominations were so gross, it was a mark of the greatest indolence not to turn their attention to review them. It now follows ---
Ezekiel 16:44-46
44. Behold, every one that useth proverbs shall use this proverb against thee, saying, As is the mother, so is her daughter.
44. Ecce quisquis proverbiat 407 super te proverbiabit dicendo, Sicut mater filia ejus.
45. Thou art thy mother's daughter, that lotheth her husband and her children; and thou art the sister of thy sisters, which lothed their husbands and their children: your mother was an Hittite, and your father an Amorite.
45. Filia matris tuae es quae abjecit 408 maritum suum et filios suos: et soror sororis tuae 409 quae repudiarunt maritos suos, et filios suos. Mater vestra Chitaea, et pater vester Amorrhaeus.
46. And thine elder sister is Samaria, she and her daughters that dwell at thy left hand: and thy younger sister, that dwelleth at thy right hand, is Sodom and her daughters.
46. Et soror tua major Samaria est, et filiae ejus, quae habitant ad sinistram tuam: et soror tua minor prae te, quae habitat a dextris tuis, Sodoma et filiae, ejus.
Here the Prophet uses another form of speech; for he says that the Jews deserved to be subject to the taunting proverbs of those who delight in wickedness. The sense is, that they were worthy of extreme infamy, so that their disgrace was bandied about in vulgar sayings. This is one point: he now adds, that proverbs of this kind were the Jews' desert --- the daughter is like her mother and sisters Then he says, their mother was a Hittite, and their sisters Samaria and Sodom. We must briefly treat these clauses in order. When the Prophet speaks of proverbs, he doubtless means what I have touched on, namely, that the crimes of the nation deserved that their 407"Verbally." — Calvin. 408Or, "repudiated, abominated." — Calvin. 409I rather think the place corrupt, and that {,{אחותךachothek, is put for ,{}אחותיךachothik, for it follows
--- ``who have turned away from their husbands;'' and this does not agree with a single sister: then shortly after the Prophet will say, that the Jews had two sisters, Sodom and Samaria; and surely what follows cannot be understood of one woman; for it says, ``they have despised their husbands.'' --- Calvin. Newcome agrees with this emendation of Calvin's; so also does Maldonatus, the Jesuit, Comment. in Ezekiel, etc.