Ezekiel 25

Ezekiel 25:1-17 . APPROPRIATELY IN THE INTERVAL OF SILENCE AS TO THE JEWS IN THE EIGHT CHAPTERS, (TWENTY-FIFTH THROUGH THIRTY-SECOND) EZEKIEL DENOUNCES JUDGMENTS ON THE HEATHEN WORLD KINGDOMS.

If Israel was not spared, much less the heathen utterly corrupt, and having no mixture of truth, such as Israel in its worst state possessed ( 1 Peter 4:17 1 Peter 4:18 ). Their ruin was to be utter: Israel's but temporary ( Jeremiah 46:28 ). The nations denounced are seven, the perfect number; implying that God's judgments would visit, not merely these, but the whole round of the heathen foes of God. Babylon is excepted, because she is now for the present viewed as the rod of God's retributive justice, a view too much then lost sight of by those who fretted against her universal supremacy.

3. ( Jeremiah 49:1 ).
when . . . profaned; . . . when . . . desolate; . . . when . . . captivity--rather, "for . . . for . . . for": the cause of the insolent exultation of Ammon over Jerusalem. They triumphed especially over the fall of the "sanctuary," as the triumph of heathenism over the rival claims of Jehovah. In Jehoshaphat's time, when the eighty-third Psalm was written ( Psalms 83:4 Psalms 83:7 Psalms 83:8 Psalms 83:12 , "Ammon . . . holpen the children of Lot," who were, therefore, the leaders of the unholy conspiracy, "Let us take to ourselves the houses of God in possession"), we see the same profane spirit. Now at last their wicked wish seems accomplished in the fall of Jerusalem. Ammon, descended from Lot, held the region east of Jordan, separated from the Amorites on the north by the river Jabbok, and from Moab on the south by the Arnon. They were auxiliaries to Babylon in the destruction of Jerusalem ( 2 Kings 24:2 ).

4. men of . . . east--literally, "children of the East," the nomad tribes of Arabia-Deserta, east of the Jordan and the Dead Sea.
palaces--their nomadic encampments or folds, surrounded with mud walls, are so called in irony. Where thy "palaces" once stood, there shall their very different "palaces" stand. Fulfilled after the ravaging of their region by Nebuchadnezzar, shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem (compare Ezekiel 21:22 Jeremiah 49:1-28 ).

5. Rabbah--meaning "the Great," Ammon's metropolis. Under the Ptolemies it was rebuilt under the name Philadelphia; the ruins are called Amman now, but there is no dwelling inhabited.
Ammonites--that is the Ammonite region is to be a "couching place for flocks," namely of the Arabs. The "camels," being the chief beast of burden of the Chaldeans, are put first, as their invasion was to prepare the Ammonite land for the Arab "flocks." Instead of busy men, there shall be "still and couching flocks."

6, 7. "Because thou hast clapped thine hands," exulting over the downfall of Jerusalem, "I also will stretch out Mine hand upon thee" (to which Ezekiel 21:17 also may refer, "I will smite Mine hands together").
hands . . . feet . . . heart--with the whole inward feeling, and with every outward indication. Stamping with the foot means dancing for joy.

7. a spoil--so the Hebrew Margin, or Keri, for the text or Chetib, "meat" (so Ezekiel 26:5 , 34:28 ). Their goods were to be a "spoil to the foe"; their state was to be "cut off," so as to be no more a "people"; and they were as individuals, for the most part, to be "destroyed."

8. Moab, Seir, and Ammon were contiguous countries, stretching in one line from Gilead on the north to the Red Sea. They therefore naturally acted in concert, and in joint hostility to Judea.
Judah is like . . . all . . . heathen--The Jews fare no better than others: it is of no use to them to serve Jehovah, who, they say, is the only true God.