Ezekiel 7:12 - Exposition

Let not the buyer rejoice, etc. We have to read, between the lines, the story of Ezekiel's companions in exile. They belonged, it will be remembered, to the nobler and wealthier class ( 2 Kings 25:19 ). They, it would seem, had been compelled to sell their estates at a price which made the "buyer rejoice and the seller mourn." In each ease the joy and the sorrow would be but transient. Wrath had gone out against the whole multitude. In Micah 2:2 and Isaiah 5:8 we have parallel instances of the advantage taken by the rich of the distress of the old tree holders. In the story of Jeremiah 32:6-16 we have, though from a very different point of view, the history of a like purchase, while the city was actually surrounded by the Chaldeans. The neglect of the sabbatic year ( Jeremiah 34:8-17 ) makes it probable that the jubilee year also (if, indeed, it had ever been more than an ideal) had fallen into desuetude, and that the buyers comforted themselves with the thought that the land they had got, on cheap terms, weald belong to them and their children forever.