Ezekiel 28:20

"And the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, Son of man, Set thy face toward Sidon, and prophesy against it, and say, I am against thee, O Sidon; and I will be glorified in the midst of thee; and they shall know that I am Jehovah, when I shall have executed judgments in her, and shall be sanctified in her. For I will send pestilence into her, and blood into her streets; and the wounded shall fall in the midst of her, with the sword upon her on every side; and they shall know that I am Jehovah. And there shall be no more a pricking brier unto the house of Israel, nor a hurting thorn of any that are round about them, that did despite unto them; and they shall know that I am the Lord Jehovah. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: When I shall have gathered the house of Israel from the peoples among whom they are scattered, and shall be sanctified in them in the sight of the nations, then shall they dwell in their own land which I gave to my servant Jacob. And they shall dwell securely therein; yea, they shall build houses, and plant vineyards, and shall dwell securely, when I have executed judgments upon all that do them despite round about them; and they shall know that I am Jehovah their God."

PROPHECY AGAINST SIDON

"Prophesy against it (Sidon) ..." (Ezekiel 28:21). There were many things in Sidon that called for the judgment of God against them, not the least of which was Jezebel's outrageous establishment of the entire apparatus of Baal worship in the very heart of Israel itself.

"Thus the Sidonian `brier' had indeed pricked Israel";[19] but God here promises judgments against Sidon that will remove such a nuisance from the harassing position they had enjoyed so long in their dealings with God's people.

Also, the last two verses here indicate the return of Israel to Palestine and God's gathering of them from all the nations into which they had been scattered.

"All of these Phoenician cities had been a constant source of temptation and annoyance to God's people for ages; and the promise here is that as soon as God shall have restored the captives to Palestine and has executed judgments upon the pagan nations which had gloated over their captivity, the Israelites should again enjoy all of their ancient privileges; and the nations would be compelled to ascribe to Jehovah, as the covenant God of Israel, all of the honor and glory that were due him."[20]

The fact that very little of this ever actually came to pass as prophesied here was due to the widespread failure of the Jews to live up to the solemn terms and conditions upon which such glorious promises rested. Jeremiah 17:7:10 should be read in connection with every wonderful promise that God made to Israel or to any other nation.

By the times of Jesus Christ, racial Israel had totally departed from the God of their fathers; and, as spelled out by the apostle Paul in the first two chapters of Romans, the hardening of the apostate people had become final; and from the racial stock of the old Israel Jesus Christ was able to rescue only a small remnant from which nucleus the New Israel, that is, the Church of Jesus Christ was launched with the life-giving gospel of the New Dispensation. Because of this near-universal sinfulness of the Old Israel, many of the glorious things God promised and had intended to do for them never occurred at all.