Commentary on Ezekiel Chapters 1-20 John Calvin (continued)
JOHN CALVIN
persuaded that their sentence was usual and common. But he shows them that the sons of God were not only mindful of their sins, when they feel themselves chastised by him, and experience shows his hostility, but when received into favor and in the enjoyment of their inheritance, they live under God's wings, and he cherishes them as a tender offspring: when, therefore, the faithful are treated so humanely by God, yet the Prophet shows that in their condition they ought to be mindful of their sins, and all your works in which you have been polluted, says he. He now shows to what purpose they were to be mindful. For the wicked are compelled to call their sins to remembrance when God, by forcibly turning their attention to them, draws them to consider what they desire to bury in oblivion. But it is here said, you shall be confounded in your own sight. Since the Hebrew word {,}קוטkot, signifies to cut off, many interpreters take it for ``ye shall be cut off;'' that is, you shall judge yourselves worthy of destruction among those whom God will cut off and blot out of the earth.
But this seems forced. Since the same word sometimes signifies to litigate, and to become abominable, I willingly take this meaning, that they shall be abominable, or contemptible, in their own sight: that is, they shall be so ashamed, as willingly and fully to acknowledge themselves utterly disgraced. Hence Ezekiel means that the faithful should suffer voluntary disgrace, that they may glorify God by the pure and genuine confession of their shame. If any one prefers to expound it, you shall be condemned or convinced, that sense will suit well enough; but I have already brought forward what seemed more simple. For I said that this was the fruit of penitence, when we he confounded before God and are vile and despicable in our own eyes, and when we not only suffer ourselves to be condemned by others, but inwardly reflect upon our own disgrace, and so of our own accord prostrate ourselves before God.
This then is the fruit of penitence, this is true humility, flowing from genuine shame.
At length it follows ---
Ezekiel 20:44
44. And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have wrought with you for my name's sake, not according to your wicked ways, nor according to your corrupt doings, O ye house of Israel, saith the Lord GOD.
44. Et cognoscetis quod ego Iehovah, cum fecero vobiscum propter nomen meum, non secundum vias vestras malas, et secundum opera vestra corrupta, domus Israel, dicit Dominator Iehovah.
Here at length God pronounces that his glory would be chiefly conspicuous in the pity which he bestowed upon those who were desperate and abandoned, gratuitously and solely with respect to his own name. Hence Paul so specially celebrates; the grace of God in the first chapter of the epistle to the Ephesians, as that mercy by which God deigns to call his own elect in a peculiar sense --- his glory; for his glory extends farther than his pity. (Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14.)
As thy name, so thy praise is extended through all lands, (Psalm 48:10) for God deserves no less glory when he destroys the wicked than when he pities his own people. But Paul calls that gratuitous favor glory par excellence, by which God embraced his own elect when he adopted them. So also it is said in this pas-