In order to his being a religious teacher and guardian of his nation, it was necessary that Ezekiel should enter into the state of his fellow - countrymen, and even share the sufferings due to their unbelief and rebellion. The Christian reader cannot fail to discern in the prophet of the Captivity a figure by anticipation of the Lord Jesus, who himself "bare our sins and carried our sorrows." Doubtless Christ bore the iniquity of men in a sense in which no other can do so. Yet there is no possibility of benefiting those who are in a state of sin and degradation, except by stooping to their low estate, participating in their lot, enduring somewhat of their sorrow, and thus bearing their iniquity.

I. WHETHER WILLINGLY OR UNWILLINGLY, IN EVERY NATIONAL CALAMITY THE INNOCENT SUFFER WITH THE GUILTY. The guilt is the nation's, the suffering is the individual's. The righteous may witness against the city's sin and rebellion, but they are overtaken by the city's catastrophe. It is not always that the city is spared for the sake of the ten righteous who are found therein. One common ruin may, as in the case of Jerusalem, overwhelm the inhabitants, alike those who have erred and offended, and those who have raised their voice in protest and in censure.

II. THE RIGHTEOUS BEAR THE INIQUITY OF THEIR NEIGHBOURS BY SENSITIVENESS TO THEIR SINS. As Lot was vexed with the filthy conversation of the dwellers in Sodom, as there were those in Jerusalem who sighed and cried for all the abominations done in the city, so in the midst of a corrupt and ungodly community there may be those who lay to heart their neighbours' iniquity, and who feel bitter distress because of conduct which to callous sinners brings no sorrow. It may be granted that this is to some extent a matter of temperament; that a sensitive character will be afflicted by what a calmer, colder disposition bears with impunity. Yet every good man should watch himself, lest familiarity with abounding sin should dull the edge of his spiritual perceptions, lest he should cease to be distressed because of the prevalence of iniquity.

III. THE RIGHTEOUS BEAR BY SYMPATHY THE SUFFERINGS WHICH SIN ENTAILS UPON THEIR NEIGHBOURS. A siege is usually accompanied by most painful and heartrending incidents; wounds and privations, pestilence and violent death, are all but inseparable from so frightful an aspect of human warfare. The prophet was not a man to think of such incidents, to realize them by vivid imagination and confident anticipation, without being grievously affected. Who is there, with a heart to feel, who can picture to himself the miseries, the disease, the want, the bereavements, which sin daily brings upon every populous city, without taking upon himself something of the burden? We are commanded to "weep with those that weep." And when the calamities which befall our neighbours are the unmistakable results of transgression of Divine commands, we do in a sense bear their iniquities, when we feel for them, and are distressed because of the errors and follies which are the occasion of afflictions and disasters.

IV. THE RIGHTEOUS MAY SOMETIMES, BY THUS PARTICIPATING IN THE CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR NEIGHBOURS' INIQUITY, BE THE AGENTS IN BRINGING ABOUT REPENTANCE AND DELIVERANCE. Our Lord Jesus Christ so identified himself with the sinful race whose nature he assumed, that he is said to have been "made sin" for us; he "bore our sins in his body on the tree." This was seen, by the infinite wisdom of our Father in heaven, to have been the one way by which salvation could be brought to this sinful humanity. Now we are reminded that, in his endurance of the results of men's sins, Jesus left us an example that we should follow in his steps. He is, indeed, the only Propitiation from sin, the only Ransom for sinners. But the principle underlying redemption is a principle which has an application to the spirit and to the moral life of all the followers of Christ. They are in this world, not simply to keep themselves pure from its evil, but to help to purify others from that evil. And this they can only do by bearing the iniquity of their fellow men; not by keeping themselves aloof froth sinners, not by merely censuring and condemning sinners, but by taking the burden of their sins upon their own renewed and compassionate hearts, by entering into their temptations, and helping to rescue them from such snares; and, above all, by bringing them, in compassion and sympathizing love, into the fellowship of that Divine Saviour who gave himself for us, and who bears and takes away the sin of the world. It is by him only that the world's iniquity is to be pardoned and to be abolished, and to be replaced by the love of and by obedience to a righteous and holy God. - T.

In this chapter there begins a series of symbols utterly impossible of modern interpretation. This ministry of symbolism has still a place in all progressive civilisation. Every age, of course, necessitates its own emblems and types, its own apocalypse of wonders and signs, but the meaning of the whole is that God has yet something to be revealed which cannot at the moment be expressed in plain language. If we could see into the inner meaning of many of the controversies in which we are engaged, we should see there many a divinely drawn symbol, curious outlines of thought, parables not yet ripe enough for words. How manifold is human life! How innumerable are the workers who are toiling at the evolution of the Divine purpose in things! One man can understand nothing but what he calls bare facts and hard realities; he has only a hand to handle, he has not the interior touch that can feel things ere yet they have taken shape. Another is always on the outlook for what pleases the eye; he delights in form and colour and symmetry, and glows almost with thankfulness as he beholds the shapeliness of things, and traces in them a subtle geometry. Another man gets behind all this, and hears voices, and sees sights excluded from the natural senses; he looks upon symbolism, upon the ministry of suggestion and dream and vision; he sees best in the darkness; the night is his day; in the great cloud he sees the ever-working God, and in the infinite stillness of religious solitude he hears, rather in echoes than in words, what he is called upon to tell the age in which he lives. Here again his difficulty increases, for although he can see with perfect plainness men, and can understand quite intelligibly all the mysteries which pass before his imagination and before his spiritual eyes, yet he has to find words that will fit the new and exciting occasion; and there are no fit words, so sometimes he is driven to make a language of his own, and hence we come upon strangeness of expression, eccentricity of thought, weirdness in quest and sympathy, — a most marvellous and tumultuous life; a great struggle after rhythm and rest, and fullest disclosure of inner realities, often ending in bitter disappointment, so that the prophet's eloquence dissolves in tears, and the man who thought he had a glorious message to deliver is broken down in humiliation when he hears the poor thunder of his own inadequate articulation. He has his "tile" and his iron pan; he lays upon his left side, and upon his right side; he takes unto him wheat and barley, beans, and lentils; he weighs out his bread, and measures out his water, and bakes "barley cakes" by a curious manufacture; and yet when it is all over he cannot tell to others in delicate enough language, or with sufficiency of illustration, what he knows to be a Divine and eternal word.

(J. Parker, D. D.)