Himself an exile, and far from the city which was the glory of his nation and the seat of the worship of his God, Ezekiel nevertheless felt keenly and bitterly the reproach which was coming upon the metropolis, the ruin which the sins of her kings and her citizens had brought upon her, the forsaking of her God, her abandonment to her foes. Yet he would not question the justice discernible in these calamities. Jerusalem was her own enemy and her own destruction.

I. THE PECULIAR AND PRE-EMINENT ADVANTAGES OF JERUSALEM.

1. Political. "Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth," was Mount Zion. "In the midst of the nations, and the countries are round about her." The commanding position of the city of the great King strikes every beholder who looks at its walls and towers from the hill of Olivet, over the intervening valley. And whoever studies the map will recognize how central a station Jerusalem occupies: "Egypt to the south, Syria to the north, Assyria to the east, and the isles of the Gentiles in the Great Sea to the west." There were providential purposes in the selection of such a site, and in the consequent contact of the Jewish state, now with one neighbour and anon with another. What lessons Judah might learn from such associations!

2. Religious. In this regard, what nation of antiquity could compare with the Hebrew people? In Jewry God was known; his Name was great in Israel. God dealt not so with any people. In Jerusalem stood the temple, where sacrifices were offered and festivals were celebrated. Here lived and ministered the priests, who maintained the visible intercourse between God and man; the prophets, who now and again spoke as the representatives of Jehovah, especially in critical times, and whose words were often as the fire, and as the hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces; the scribes, whose profession it was to preserve and to expound the Law of God for the enlightenment and admonition of the people. Signal were the privileges enjoyed by Jerusalem, and by the people who gloried in Jerusalem as their metropolis.

II. THE ABUSE OF PRIVILEGES WITH WHICH JERUSALEM WAS CHARGEABLE. By his prophet the Lord brought home this fault to the guilty nation. Jerusalem is charged:

1. With rejection of God and of his judgments.

2. With rebellion in doing wickedness.

3. With error from God's ways.

The language is strong, but not too strong for the case, for the circumstances. The Eternal was Israel's King; and his lawful subjects, though distinguished by his favour and exalted to honour by his clemency and condescension, had turned against the Sovereign to whom they owed everything that they possessed and gloried in. In the circumstances, reprobation could not be too severe.

III. COMPARISON WITH OTHER CITIES AND OTHER NATIONS ENHANCED THE GUILT OF JERUSALEM.

1. Their privileges had been inferior in kind and fewer in number. Politically, indeed, they were in several instances great; but religiously they stood upon a distinctly lower level than did the Jews.

2. Their guilt was not so enormous. These nations round about sinned indeed, but they sinned against the light of nature, not against the clearer light of revelation. They did not break the written Law, for they did not possess it; they did not blaspheme Jehovah, for they knew not his Name; they did not despise his prophets, for the prophets were not sent to them. All these comparisons serve to aggravate the heinous guilt of the people of Judah and Jerusalem. When attention is given to the pre-eminent position of Jerusalem in comparison with surrounding cities and countries, the justice of the denunciations of the prophets is unquestionable.

"Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
Exalted once on high,
Thou favoured home of God on earth,
Thou heaven beneath the sky!"

IV. GOD'S OBSERVATION OF JERUSALEM'S SIN AND FOLLY, AND HIS PURPOSES OF RETRIBUTION.

1. The Lord represents himself as pained by the contempt with which Jerusalem has treated his distinguishing mercy and favour.

2. He is displeased with those who have shown so little appreciation of all that he has done for their well being.

3. He threatens judgments upon the disobedient, rebellious, and impenitent. - T.

Jerusalem was designed to have a good influence upon the nations and countries round about, and was set in the midst of them as a candle upon a candlestick to spread the light of Divine revelation, which she was blessed with, to all the dark corners of the neighbouring nations, that from them it might diffuse itself further, even to the ends of the earth. Jerusalem was set in the midst of the nations, to be as the heart in the body, to invigorate this dead world with a Divine life, to be an example of everything that is good.

( M. Henry.)