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His redemptive purpose already begun, His name's sake, i.e. His sole Godhead, and yet His being known alone in Israel. With the intercession there is always confession of Israel's sin.

These are the main points in early literature. What elements of the Christian doctrine they show is easily.

seen.

Taking all these points together, three main principles appear:

1. God's nature is gracious; from His nature He will take away the sin of the world.

2. There may be in His operation in doing this, first, a display of His righteous anger against sin; and, second, also on the part of sinful men or their representative, an entering into this righteous indignation.

And, 3. On the part of those forgiven there must be repentance, and trust in God's mercy.

6. Ritual use of the Term.

From Atonement, as it appears in the extra-ritual books of the Old Testament, we pass now to the ritual atonement. The law or ritual legislation is very extensive, and not altogether homogeneous, and does not formally give any account of atonement. It regulates the offerings, but it introduces us to the ritual system as already in operation, without giving any account how it began, or what are the principles embodied in it. Its two fundamental positions are that all sacrifices must be offered at one place; and that only the priests, the sons of Aaron, can offer or make atonement. There is one writer, however, who stands half-way between the extra-ritual or prophetic Scriptures and the ritual law, the prophet Ezekiel; and we gain a clearer view of the nature and purposes of the ritual law from him than we acquire from the law itself. The last nine chapters of his book furnish a key that opens the ritual law more easily than anything which we find in the law itself.

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The Book of Ezekiel, although probably not much read, is perhaps, apart from occasional difficulties, the easiest understood of all the prophetic books. The book was probably written late in life, and the writer has so disposed it as to make its mere order accurately express his general conceptions.

(1) In chaps. i.-iii. there is the great vision of God borne by the cherubim, and the initiation by the God who thus manifests Himself, of the prophet into his office of a watchman among his people. The vision in chap. i. is a vision of God as the prophet conceived Him. Then God, thus present symbolically, makes the prophet conscious of his inspiration and of the fact that Jehovah is with him in all he speaks, by presenting to him the roll of a book, containing all Jehovah's words, which he eats, and which he feels sweet to his taste. The sweetness was not due to this, that though the book, being full of lamentation and woe, contained bitter things at first, at the end it was filled with promises which were sweet. The sweetness was rather due to this, that the things written were from God, whose bitter word is sweet; as we have it in Jer. xv. 16: “Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and Thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by Thy name, Jehovah God of hosts." The prophet's idea of what we call his inspiration is perhaps more precise and stringent than that of Isaiah. In the inaugural vision of Isaiah, " there flew one of the seraphim having a live coal in his hand, . . . and he laid it on my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away" (vi. 6, 7). And immediately on this an impulse seized the prophet to enter on Jehovah's service. "Here am I, send me." All that Isaiah felt needful to make him a prophet was the forgiveness of his sin There was in him a strength and power of character which needed only the removal of the moral hindrance to set them free. But both Jeremiah and Ezekiel were weaker men. Ezekiel, as is usual with him, makes Jeremiah his model, who says, "The Lord said unto me, Whatsoever I

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command thee, that shalt thou speak. . . . Then the Lord put forth His hand, and touched my mouth, saying, Behold, I have put My words in thy mouth" (i. 7-9). Both the later prophets represent themselves as speaking not merely the word, but the words' of Jehovah.

Now, from this point onwards Ezekiel's book has a clear order.

(2) Chaps. iv.-xxiv. contain prophecies announcing the destruction of Jerusalem, and symbolical actions prefiguring it. These actions, or at least many of them, were not actually performed. They passed as symbolical representations before the prophet's mind, for he thought in figures, and he narrated them to the people. With great wealth and variety of representation the prophet exhibits in these chapters the certainty and manner of the destruction of the city, and the ruin of the kingdom of Judah; and the necessity of it from the persistent sin of the people, and the nature of Jehovah, who must display His holiness in judgment. There is much in these chapters that is very powerful as well as beautiful-some things which show that if Ezekiel had lived in our day he would have risen to the highest rank in moral imaginative writing. His xvith chapter is an allegory of Jerusalem under the child who became a faithless wife. breadth with which modern taste is unfamiliar, the allegory is powerful; and when the details are forgotten, and only the general conception remains in the mind, the prophet's creation is felt to be artistically beautiful as well as true. Jerusalem and Jehovah are represented. An outcast infant exposed on the open field, and weltering in its blood, was seen by the pitying eye of a passer-by. Rescued and nourished, she grew up to the fairest womanhood, and became the wife of her benefactor, who lavished on her all that could delight and elevate. But the ways into which he led her were too lofty to be understood, and the atmosphere around her too pure for her to breathe; the old inborn nature (her father was an Amorite and her mother a Hittite) was still there beneath all the refinements

figure of a foundling Though marked by a

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for which it had no taste, and at last the native taint in her blood asserted itself in shameless depravity and insatiable lewdness.

(3) Chaps. xxv.-xlviii. As in the first half of his book. Ezekiel's thoughts are occupied with the coming destruction of Jerusalem and Judah, so in the last half he is occupied with the restoration and final felicity of Israel. There are three steps in his delineation-(a) judgments on the historical nations around Israel, in order to prepare for the restoration of Israel (chaps. xxv.-xxxii.); (b) the process of Israel's restoration itself (chaps. xxxiii.-xxxix.); and (c) finally, a picture of Israel's restored and perfect condition (chaps. xl.-xlviii. 5).

We may look at each of these. First, chaps. XXV.xxxii. The judgments on the nations. — Israel occupies a place of universal significance in the history of the world; for it is the people of Jehovah, who is God alone. He who is God alone, we are again taught, has become God of Israel, and it is through Israel that He is known to the nations, and through Israel and her history that He will fully reveal Himself to the peoples of the world. The perfect manifestation of Himself will be seen in Israel's restoration, when His glory shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. But this restoration of Israel cannot be without great judgments on the nations who have hitherto harassed her or seduced her. These judgments will awaken the nations to the knowledge of who the God of Israel is: they shall give them to know that He is Jehovah, God alone; and they will ensure that in the future His people shall not be troubled or led astray. Chastisement overtakes the nations for two sins, first, because of their demeanour towards Israel, the people of the Lord; for they had taken part in Jerusalem's destruction, as Edom, or had rejoiced over it, as Ammon and Moab; or they had been a snare to Israel, inspiring false trust and seducing her from the true God, as Egypt. And, secondly, judgment falls on them because of their ungodly pride and self-deification, as in the case of Tyre and Egypt, and their failure to acknowledge

Him as God who is God alone. And the issue of His judgments in all cases is, that the nations know that He is Jehovah, God alone; and thus in the future all the peoples around Israel will no more injure her. When restored, she shall dwell in perfect peace.

Second, chaps. xxxiii.-xxxix. The process of the restoration of Israel itself. It is in these chapters that the main part of the prophet's contributions to Old Testament theology lie, such as his teaching on the place of the individual soul before God (chap. xxxiii.). In general, he reviews all that was evil or calamitous in the past, and intimates how it shall be reversed and remedied. For example, the shepherds of the people, the royal house, had destroyed alike themselves and the flock. But the Lord Himself will take in hand the gathering of His scattered sheep together, and the feeding of them henceforth; He will appoint His servant David over them to lead them (chap. xxxiv.).—Here belongs the splendid vision of the valley of dry bones. The nation is dead, and its bones bleached; but there shall be a resurrection of the dead people, and a restoration of them to their own land. Two kingdoms shall no more exist there; but the Lord's people shall be one, and His servant David shall be prince over them for ever (chap. xxxvii.). There is one passage in these chapters, where the redemptive principles illustrated in these future blessings and in all Israel's history are stated, which is very remarkable. That is chap. xxxvi. 17-38: "Son of man, when the house of Israel dwelt in their own land, they defiled it by their doings . . . wherefore I poured out My fury upon them. . . and scattered them among the nations. And when they came among the nations they profaned My holy name, in that men said of them, These are the people of Jehovah, and they are gone forth out of His land. Therefore say unto the house of Israel, I do not this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for Mine holy name, which ye have profaned. . . . And I will sanctify My great name, and the nations shall know that I am Jehovah. . . . For I will take you from the nations, and will bring you into

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