Ezekiel 25:11
So I will execute judgments on Moab, and they will know that I am the LORD.'
Sermons
The Tribunal of NationsJ.D. Davies Ezekiel 25:1-17
The Blasphemy and the Punishment of MoabJ.R. Thomson Ezekiel 25:8-11
The Sin and Punishment of the MoabitesW. Jones Ezekiel 25:8-11














Although Ezekiel, speaking as the prophet of the Lord, has words of upbraiding and of threatening for the several nations from whose hostility Israel suffered, it is not the case that these words are words of indiscriminate application. On the contrary, they have special reference to the circumstances of the several peoples and to their peculiar relations with Israel. In the case of Moab, the prophet urges a peculiar charge, which is not, indeed, supported by detailed facts, but which he was nevertheless assured was a just charge and a heinous offence.

I. THE PECULIAR OFFENSE. Moab was convicted of saying, "The house of Judah is like unto all the nations." The prophet knew, and we know, that the descendants of Jacob were a separated, chosen, and peculiar people. And to assert the contrary, as Moab had done, was to cast a slur upon the revelation of God, upon the vocation with which his people were called, upon the purpose which Divine wisdom had in view in conferring upon them special privileges.

II. THE MORAL ENORMITY OF THE OFFENSE. It is only when the character of this sin of Moab is carefully considered, with all that it involves, that the guilt of Moab appears in its proper blackness.

1. It involves the classing of the holy and ever-blessed Jehovah with the idols which were the expression of human injustice, cruelty, caprice, and lust.

2. It involves the confusion of the righteous laws of Moses with the regulations and observances which obtained in heathen communities, some just and some unjust, and many of them superstitious and impure.

3. It involves the confusion of the Divine ordinances of sacrifice, of priesthood, of religious service, of sacred festivals, with the debasing rites practiced among the unenlightened idolaters.

4. It involves the classing together of the people consecrated to Jehovah with those who had abandoned themselves to systems of selfishness, worldliness, or superstition. All this was just calling darkness light, and light darkness. It, indeed, reminds us of what our Lord has said regarding blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. We cannot, therefore, look upon this offence of the Moabites as something which has no application to ourselves. The offence of calling evil good and good evil is an offence which, in various forms, is committed in our own day, and against which, therefore, men need still to be warned. There are blemishes in the Church of Christ as it actually exists upon earth; but still it is the Church of Christ, and it must not, therefore, be confounded with institutions of human origin, and to speak of it as we might speak of other organizations and institutions is to sin somewhat after the manner of the sin of Moab in the days of the Captivity.

III. THE PUNISHMENT OF THE OFFENSE. In the case of Moab this was terrible indeed. The territory was to be laid open to the incursions of the Eastern foe, the cities were to be taken by a foreign force, judgments were to be executed upon the people, and, like the Ammonites, they were to be overtaken by speedy and irremediable ruin. The very thought of such infliction is enough to make the sinner tremble, to induce him to repent of his evil words and actions, and to seek, in God's own way, reconciliation with the authority which he has despised, Silence, contrition, and true submission of heart are the true way of peace. - T.

Set thy face against the Ammonites.
At the outset it must be understood that prophecies of this kind form part of Jehovah's message to Israel. Although they are usually cast in the form of direct address to foreign peoples, this must not lead us to imagine that they were intended for actual publication in the countries to which they refer. A prophet's real audience always consisted of his own countrymen, whether his discourse was about themselves or about their neighbours. And it is easy to see that it was impossible to declare the purpose of God concerning Israel in words that came home to men's business and bosoms, without taking account of the state and the destiny of other nations. Just as it would not be possible nowadays to forecast the future of Egypt without alluding to the fate of the Ottoman Empire, so it was not possible then to describe the future of Israel in the concrete manner characteristic of the prophets without indicating the place reserved for those peoples with whom it had close intercourse. Besides this, a large part of the national consciousness of Israel was made up of interests, friendly or the reverse, in neighbouring states. We cannot read the utterances of the prophets with regard to any of these nationalities without seeing that they often appeal to perceptions deeply lodged in the popular mind, which could be utilised to convey the spiritual lessons which the prophets desired to teach. It must not be supposed, however, that such prophecies are in any degree the expression of national vanity or jealousy. What the prophets aim at is to elevate the thoughts of Israel to the sphere of eternal truths of the kingdom of God; and it is only in so far as these can be made to touch the conscience of the nation at this point that they appeal to what we may call its international sentiments. Now, the question we have to ask is, What spiritual purpose for Israel is served by the announcements of the destiny of the outlying heathen populations? Speaking generally, prophecies of this class had a moral value for two reasons. In the first place, they re-echo and confirm the sentence of judgment passed on Israel herself. They do this in two ways: they illustrate the principle on which Jehovah deals with His own people, and His character as the righteous judge of men. Wherever a "sinful kingdom" was found, whether in Israel or elsewhere, that kingdom must be removed from its place among the nations. But again, not only was the principle of the judgment emphasised, but the manner in which it was to be carried out was more clearly exhibited. In all cases the pre-exilic prophets announce that the overthrow of the Hebrew states was to be effected either by the Assyrians or the Babylonians. These great world powers were in succession the instruments fashioned and used by Jehovah for the performance of His great work in the earth. Now it was manifest that if this anticipation was well founded, it involved the overthrow of all the nations in immediate contact with Israel. The people of Israel or Judah were thus taught to look on their fate as involved in a great scheme of Divine providence, overturning all the existing relations which gave them a place among the nations of the world, and preparing for a new development of the purpose of Jehovah in the future. When we turn to that ideal future we find a second and more suggestive aspect of these prophecies against the heathen. All the prophets teach that the destiny of Israel is inseparably bound up with the future of God's kingdom on earth. What men needed to be taught then, and what we need to remember still, is that each nation holds its position in subordination to the ends of God's government; that no power or wisdom or refinement will save a state from destruction when it ceases to serve the interests of His kingdom. The foreign peoples that come under the survey of the prophets are as yet strangers to the true God, and are therefore destitute of that which could secure them a place in the reconstruction of political relationships of which Israel is to be the religious centre. And whether any particular nation should survive to participate in the glories of that latter day depends on the view taken of its present condition and its fitness for incorporation in the universal empire of Jehovah soon to be established. We now know that this was not the form in which Jehovah's purpose of salvation was destined to be realised in the history of the world. Since the coming of Christ the people of Israel has lost its distinctive and central position as the bearer of the hopes and promises of the true religion. In its place we have a spiritual kingdom of men united by faith in Jesus Christ, and in the worship of one Father in spirit and in truth — a kingdom which from its very nature can have no local centre or political organisation. Hence the conversion of the heathen can no longer be conceived as national homage paid to the seat of Jehovah's sovereignty on Zion; nor is the unfolding of the Divine plan of universal salvation bound up with the extinction of the nationalities which once symbolised the hostility of the world to the kingdom of God. This fact has an important bearing on the question of the fulfilment of the foreign prophecies of the Old Testament. As concrete embodiments of the eternal principles exhibited in the rise and fall of nations, they have an abiding significance for the Church in all ages; but the actual working out of these principles in history could not, in the nature of things, be complete within the limits of the world known to the inhabitants of Judaea. If we are to look for their ideal fulfilment, we shall only find it in the progressive victory of Christianity over all forms of error and superstition, and in the dedication of all the resources of human civilisation — its wealth, its commercial enterprise, its political power — to the advancement of the kingdom of our God and His Christ.

(John Skinner, M. A.)

People
Ammonites, Cherethites, Dedan, Ezekiel, Kerethites, Seir, Teman
Places
Ammon, Beth-baal-meon, Beth-jeshimoth, Dedan, Edom, Jerusalem, Kiriathaim, Moab, Rabbah, Samaria, Seir, Teman
Topics
Execute, Judge, Judgments, Moab, Punishment, Thus
Outline
1. God's vengeance, for their insolence against the Jews, upon the Ammonites
8. upon Moab and Seir
12. upon Edom
15. and upon the Philistines

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Ezekiel 25:8-14

     7773   prophets, role

Library
A Clearing-Up Storm in the Realm
(Revelation, Chapters vi.-viii.) "God Almighty! King of nations! earth Thy footstool, heaven Thy throne! Thine the greatness, power, and glory, Thine the kingdom, Lord, alone! Life and death are in Thy keeping, and Thy will ordaineth all: From the armies of Thy heavens to an unseen insect's fall. "Reigning, guiding, all-commanding, ruling myriad worlds of light; Now exalting, now abasing, none can stay Thy hand of might! Working all things by Thy power, by the counsel of Thy will. Thou art God!
by S. D. Gordon—Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation

Ezekiel
To a modern taste, Ezekiel does not appeal anything like so powerfully as Isaiah or Jeremiah. He has neither the majesty of the one nor the tenderness and passion of the other. There is much in him that is fantastic, and much that is ritualistic. His imaginations border sometimes on the grotesque and sometimes on the mechanical. Yet he is a historical figure of the first importance; it was very largely from him that Judaism received the ecclesiastical impulse by which for centuries it was powerfully
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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