By the remarkable symbolism described in this chapter, Ezekiel was himself assured that the metropolis of his country was about to endure the horrors of a siege, and his action was intended for a sign to the house of Israel. Jerusalem, like many of the ruinous cities of antiquity, and indeed of modern times, underwent the calamity again and again. It was probably the siege by Nebuchadnezzar which was foretold by the symbol of the tile and the iron pan. To be besieged was a not uncommon incident of warfare. But the prophet of God treated this approaching catastrophe, not merely as a fact of history, but as a moral and Divine lesson.

I. THE GENERAL LESSONS VIVIDLY PRESENTED BY A CITY ENDURING A STATE OF SIEGE.

1. Community in civic life. Every city always has its own social characteristics. Citizens take a pride in the prosperity and glory of their city, especially if it be the metropolis of the nation. In our own time Paris was besieged by the German army, and its unity was never so realized as when thus encompassed by the enemy.

2. Community in resistance and hostility. Distinctions of rank and of social position almost vanish when a common danger threatens every class alike. Each man takes his share in the defence of the city, in bearing the common burden. All are drawn together by their community in dread or in defiance of the foe.

3. Community in the experience of suffering. Hunger and thirst, privation and want of rest, are shared by all the citizens of a beleaguered city. Men who partake the same calamity are drawn together by their common experience. The annals of a siege will usually be found to contain the record of remarkable cases of heroic unselfishness and public devotion.

II. THE SPECIAL LESSONS PRESENTED BY THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM. There may well have been manifested a community in spiritual discipline and profit.

1. The vanity of human pride and ambition was strikingly exhibited. The Jews were a vain glorious people; they possessed many distinctive marks of superiority raising them above the heathen, and their knew and boasted that it was so. They took credit to themselves for much for which they ought to have offered thanks to God. Their self-confidence and glorying were rebuked in the most emphatic manner when their fair and famed metropolis was besieged and threatened with destruction. This lesson is impressed upon their countrymen with unsparing faithfulness by the ancient Hebrew prophets.

2. Equally pointed was the lesson conveyed as to the utter vanity of merely human help. The Jews did indeed sometimes seek alliances which might befriend and assist them in their distress; but against such alliances they were repeatedly warned by the prophets, whose duty it was to assure their countrymen of the vanity of the help of man. Especially were they rebuked for seeking friendship and aid from Egypt against, the forces of the Eastern foe; and they found such friendship hollow, and such aid ineffectual.

3. The inhabitants of Jerusalem and the people of Judah generally were, by the siege of the city, directed to seek Divine deliverance. The city might fall; its walls might be levelled with the dust; its defenders might be slain; its inhabitants decimated. But all this might be overruled for the nation's real and lasting good, should calamity and humiliation lead to repentance, should Divine favour be entreated, and a way of salvation be opened up to the remnant of the people. - T.

In this chapter there begins a series of symbols utterly impossible of modern interpretation. This ministry of symbolism has still a place in all progressive civilisation. Every age, of course, necessitates its own emblems and types, its own apocalypse of wonders and signs, but the meaning of the whole is that God has yet something to be revealed which cannot at the moment be expressed in plain language. If we could see into the inner meaning of many of the controversies in which we are engaged, we should see there many a divinely drawn symbol, curious outlines of thought, parables not yet ripe enough for words. How manifold is human life! How innumerable are the workers who are toiling at the evolution of the Divine purpose in things! One man can understand nothing but what he calls bare facts and hard realities; he has only a hand to handle, he has not the interior touch that can feel things ere yet they have taken shape. Another is always on the outlook for what pleases the eye; he delights in form and colour and symmetry, and glows almost with thankfulness as he beholds the shapeliness of things, and traces in them a subtle geometry. Another man gets behind all this, and hears voices, and sees sights excluded from the natural senses; he looks upon symbolism, upon the ministry of suggestion and dream and vision; he sees best in the darkness; the night is his day; in the great cloud he sees the ever-working God, and in the infinite stillness of religious solitude he hears, rather in echoes than in words, what he is called upon to tell the age in which he lives. Here again his difficulty increases, for although he can see with perfect plainness men, and can understand quite intelligibly all the mysteries which pass before his imagination and before his spiritual eyes, yet he has to find words that will fit the new and exciting occasion; and there are no fit words, so sometimes he is driven to make a language of his own, and hence we come upon strangeness of expression, eccentricity of thought, weirdness in quest and sympathy, — a most marvellous and tumultuous life; a great struggle after rhythm and rest, and fullest disclosure of inner realities, often ending in bitter disappointment, so that the prophet's eloquence dissolves in tears, and the man who thought he had a glorious message to deliver is broken down in humiliation when he hears the poor thunder of his own inadequate articulation. He has his "tile" and his iron pan; he lays upon his left side, and upon his right side; he takes unto him wheat and barley, beans, and lentils; he weighs out his bread, and measures out his water, and bakes "barley cakes" by a curious manufacture; and yet when it is all over he cannot tell to others in delicate enough language, or with sufficiency of illustration, what he knows to be a Divine and eternal word.

(J. Parker, D. D.)