Ezekiel 35:5 - Exposition

Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred ; literally, hatred of old, or eternal enmity (cf. Ezekiel 25:15 ). This was the first of the two specific grounds upon which Eden should feel the stroke of Divine vengeance. Edom had been Israel's hereditary foe from the days of Esau and Jacob ( Genesis 25:22 , sqq . ; and Genesis 27:37 ) downwards. Inspired with unappeasable wrath ( Amos 1:11 ), during the period of the wandering he had refused Israel, "his brother," a passage through his territory ( Numbers 20:14-21 ; 11:17 ), and in the days of Jehoshaphat had combined with Ammon and Moab to invade Judah ( 2 Chronicles 20:10 , 2 Chronicles 20:11 ; cf. Psalms 83:1-8 ). His relentless antipathy to Israel culminated, according to Ezekiel (cf. Obadiah 1:13 ), in the last days of Jerusalem, in the time of her calamity , when Nebuchadnezzar's armies encompassed her walls, in the time that her iniquity had an end ; or, in the time of the iniquity of the end (Revised Version); meaning, according to Keil, "the time of Judah's final transgression;" or, according to Dr. Currey, in the 'Speaker's Commentary,' the time when the capture of the city put an end to her iniquity; but, with more probability, according to Hengstenberg, Plumptre, and others, the time of that iniquity which brought on her end (comp. Ezekiel 21:29 ). Ewald translates, "at the time of her extremest punishment," taking avon in the sense of punishment—a rendering the Revisers have placed in the margin. Then, according to Obadiah ( Obadiah 1:11-14 ), the Edomites had not only stood coolly by, but malevolently exulted when they beheld Jerusalem besieged by the Babylonian warriors; and not only joined with the foreign invaders in the sacking of the city, but occupied its gates and guarded the roads leading into the country, so as to prevent the escape of any of the wretched inhabitants, and even hewed down with the sword such fugitives as they were not able to save alive and deliver up to captivity. To this Ezekiel refers when he accuses Edom of having shed the blood of the children of Israel by the fores of the sword; literally, of having poured the children of Israel upon the hands of the sword; i.e. of having delivered them up to the sword (cf. Psalms 63:11 ; Jeremiah 18:21 ).