The consuming cauldron.
The threatened judgment has at last descended upon the guilty city; and Ezekiel, far away in the land of the Captivity, sees in vision, and declares to his fellow-captives by a parable, the siege of Jerusalem now actually taking place. As in so many parts of his prophecies, Ezekiel reveals by symbol that which he has to communicate. Opinions differ as to whether the cauldron was actually filled with the joints of animals and was actually heated by a fire. But the familiar operation, whether literally performed or merely imagined and described, served vividly to portray to the mind the calamities which were befalling the doomed metropolis.
I. THE SIN OF THE CITY. As described in this passage, the errors of Jerusalem may be classified under three headings.
1. Lies. By which we must understand the corruption, the deceits and frauds, the political insincerity, which had eaten away the very heart of the citizens.
2. Lewdness. Or the prevalence of sensual sins and of carnal luxury, opposed to that purity and simplicity of domestic life in which the moral health of a nation ever consists.
3. Blood-guiltiness. Or violence and murder, which at this time were rife in Jerusalem, each man seeking his own interests, even at the expense of the life of his neighbors. These three classes of iniquity are chosen by the prophet as peculiarly heinous and obtrusive, not as exhausting, but simply as exemplifying, the city's sinfulness.
II. THE JUDGMENT OF THE CITY. As the flesh and bones are placed in the cauldron, and boiled and seethed by the fire being applied beneath, so the inhabitants of Jerusalem are enclosed within the walls, the besieging army surrounds them, and the citizens are abandoned to all the privations and fears and sufferings, and finally to the destruction, incident to so miserable a condition. The instrument of chastisement is appointed to be the nation into whose idolatries Judah had been seduced, the nation whose protection might for a time have availed to avert further evils, had not the catastrophe been hastened by the treachery and rebellion of prince and people. The Divine Judge never lacks instruments for the carrying out of his own purposes. "Heap on wood; kindle the fire!"
III. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CITY. Previous punishment has been of the nature of chastisement, of correction; this is of the nature of consuming. All the calamities which have come upon Jerusalem have failed to produce true repentance and radical reformation; it remains now to execute the threats and to complete the ruin foretold. The language coming from the Almighty Ruler, who had taken Jerusalem under his especial patronage and care, is frightful indeed. "I will do it; I will not go back, neither will I spare, neither will I repent; according to thy ways, and according to thy doings, shall they judge thee, saith the Lord God." It is evident that the purpose of God is this—that the era of rebellion shall come to an end, that there must be a break in the continuity of the national life, that a future revival must be a new beginning unaffected for evil by the habits and traditions of the past. To this end the people and all their ways and practices, all their rebellions and idolatries, all their oppressions and immoralities, must first be cast into the cauldron of judgment, and many must be consumed and destroyed.—T.