Ezekielchapter 25
17 verses · KJVEzekiel book hub →
Key verse
Thus saith the Lord God; Because the Philistines have dealt by revenge, and have taken vengeance with a despiteful heart, to destroy it for the old hatred;
It stands in scene D of the chapter, verses 15 to 17.
The chapter
Chapter summary
The oracles against the nations begin, four in one chapter, each answering a sin of the tongue or the heart against Judah's fall. Ammon said 'Aha' against the sanctuary when it was profaned, and is given to the children of the east for a possession. Moab said 'Judah is like unto all the nations,' flattening Israel's election, and loses her frontier cities. Edom dealt vengefully against the house of Judah: 'I will lay my vengeance upon Edom by the hand of my people Israel.' And the Philistines took vengeance with despite of soul to destroy with perpetual enmity, so the Cherethites are cut off. Each closes: they shall know that I am Jehovah.
Context
Prophecy · Ezekiel · Ezekiel overview
Where the chapter sits
Ezekiel 25 falls in Oracles against the nations (chapters 25–32). Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia (25); Tyre (26–28); Sidon (28); Egypt (29–32). The King of Tyre lament (28:11–19) surfaces interpretive debate on Satan's fall.
Before it: Symbolic acts and judgment on Jerusalem, chapters 4–24. After it: Restoration promised, chapters 33–37.
The whole shape of Ezekiel→The world behind this chapter
Ezekiel 25The history
These four were not distant empires. They were the countries over the next ridge, all within a few days' walk of Jerusalem, and Israel had been trading, fighting and intermarrying with them for six hundred years. Ammon and Moab were reckoned in Genesis as descendants of Lot, Abraham's nephew, family, in the long memory of that world.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
Ammon's capital was Rabbah, on the edge of the eastern desert where the farmland runs out. The threat that it will become a pasture for camels and a resting place for flocks is precise geography: when a caravan city loses its wall and its trade, the desert tribes graze it. Those men of the east are the nomadic groups who moved between the settled land and the steppe according to the season.
The specific charge against Ammon is a gesture: you clapped your hands and stamped your feet and rejoiced with all the malice of your heart against the land of Israel. Ammon did more than gloat. Jeremiah records that the Ammonite king sponsored the assassination of Gedaliah, the governor Babylon installed after the fall, which destroyed the last chance of an orderly life in the land.
Moab's charge is a sentence, not a gesture: behold, the house of Judah is like all the other nations. That is, there was nothing special about them after all, their God was no different. Edom's is revenge taken personally, and Philistia's is old, settled hatred acted on with an everlasting grudge. Four neighbours, four different ways of kicking a country while it is down.
What it meant to them
For a community that had just lost everything, the reaction of the neighbours was its own wound. This chapter says God heard the clapping.
It also does something structural that the exiles needed. Judgment did not stop at Jerusalem. The same God who had just used Babylon on His own people is holding every nation on that map to account, which means the world is under one government and not simply under Babylon's.
Sources cited
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament
A. Ammon clapped when the sanctuary fell
1. (vv. 1-3)
a.The word of the Lord came again unto me: The Lord sends Ezekiel to face the Ammonites directly, and the charge is not conquest but glee: they said Aha against the sanctuary when it was profaned, against the land of Israel when it was desolate, and against the house of Judah when it went into captivity. Three griefs are named as one insult, the temple's fall, the land's ruin, and the people's exile all mocked in a single syllable of contempt. Henry reads the sin as malice rejoicing in a neighbor's calamity rather than any wrong Judah did to Ammon, the first of four oracles built on the same shape.
Ezekiel 25:1, 1 voiceWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Ezekiel 25:1
“It was a distinct part of scriptural prophecy to address pagan nations. In Isaiah Isa. 13–19, Jeremiah Jer. 46–51, and here Ezek. 25–32, one section is specially devoted to a collection of such prophecies. Every such prediction had the general purpose of exhibiting the conflict ever waging between the servants of God and the powers of the world, the struggle in which the Church of Christ has still to wrestle against her foes Eph 6:12, but in which she will surely prevail. It was a distinct part of scriptural prophecy to address pagan nations.”
Ezekiel 25:2, 2 voices
Ezekiel 25:2
“Son of man, set thy face against the Ammonites,.... Who were of the posterity of Lot, implacable enemies of the Jews; who hated their religion, and envied their wealth and happiness; against these the prophet is bid to "set his face"; to look that way where they lived, and to put on a frowning countenance, and a menacing aspect: "strengthen thy face", as the Septuagint and Arabic versions render it; look boldly at them: and prophesy against them; deliver out the following prophecy concerning them.”
Ezekiel 25:2
“Set thy face against the Ammonites - We have already seen, Eze 21:19, etc., that when Nebuchadnezzar left Babylon he was in doubt whether he should besiege Riblath, the capital of the Ammonites, or Jerusalem, the capital of the Jews, first: and having used his divination. he was determined, by the result, to attack Jerusalem the first. He did so and the Ammonites, seeing the success of his arms, made friends with him, and exulted in the ruin of the Jews. God resents this, and predicts their downfall with that of Edom, Moab, and the Philistines.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Ezekiel 25:3, 2 voices
Ezekiel 25:3
“In Jehoshaphat's time, when the eighty-third Psalm was written (Ps 83:4, 7, 8, 12, "Ammon . . . holpen the children of Lot," who were, therefore, the leaders of the unholy conspiracy, "Let us take to ourselves the houses of God in possession"), we see the same profane spirit.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Ezekiel 25:3
“Aha - When thou shouldest have pitied, thou didst proudly insult over my people. The men of the east - The Arabians, associates of Nebuchadnezzar, who recompensed their service, with giving them this country when it was conquered, as it was five years after the desolation of Jerusalem. Rabbah - The royal city, called since Philadelphia from the king of Egypt who built it.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
2. (vv. 4-5)
a.deliver thee to the men of the east: The sentence answers the taunt with a reversal: Ammon's land is delivered to the men of the east, likely the Bedouin tribes of the Arabian desert, who pitch their camps and pasture their flocks where Ammon's cities stood. Rabbah, Ammon's capital and the seat of its kings, becomes a stable for camels, and the nation that mocked Israel's sanctuary loses its own settled land to nomads. Gill notes the recognition formula closing the sentence, ye shall know that I am the Lord, the same purpose clause the book repeats over every judgment and every restoration alike.
Ezekiel 25:4, 1 voice
Ezekiel 25:4
“Will deliver thee to the men of the east - Probably the Scenite Arabs, Ishmaelites, and people of Kedar, who seized upon the provinces of the vanquished Ammonites, etc. The following description suits this people only, living on fruits, the milk of their flocks, using camels, etc. Some think the people of the east mean the Chaldeans.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Ezekiel 25:5, 1 voice
Ezekiel 25:5
“Rabbah--meaning "the Great," Ammon's metropolis. Under the Ptolemies it was rebuilt under the name Philadelphia; the ruins are called Amman now, but there is no dwelling inhabited.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
3. (vv. 6-7)
a.clapped thine hands, and stamped with the feet: The Lord restates the charge in bodily terms, clapped thine hands, and stamped with the feet, gestures of open exultation rather than private satisfaction, and rejoiced in heart with all thy despite against the land of Israel. Keil reads the repetition as deliberate, the second oracle beat driving home that Ammon's crime was performed before whatever audience was watching, not merely felt in secret. The sentence widens from Rabbah made a stable to national extinction, cut off from the people and caused to perish out of the countries, and Ammon as a distinct nation does not survive into the later record the way Judah does.
B. Moab said Judah is like all the other nations
1. (vv. 8-11)
a.the house of Judah is like unto all the heathen: Moab and Seir join the indictment with a different insult, not glee but a leveling claim, the house of Judah is like unto all the heathen, denying that Israel's covenant history sets it apart from any other nation. The Lord answers by naming Moab's own glory against it, Beth-jeshimoth, Baal-meon and Kiriathaim, cities on its frontier that Numbers and Joshua once listed as Israel's own inheritance nearby, opened now to the same eastern invaders given Ammon's land. Fairbairn notes the closing line folds Moab into Ammon's sentence rather than giving it a separate one, that the Ammonites may not be remembered among the nations, the two peoples judged and erased together as they had long been neighbors together.
Ezekiel 25:8, 1 voice
Ezekiel 25:8
“Moab and Seir do say - Seir means the Idumeans. It appears that both these, with the Ammonites, had made a league with Zedekiah, Jer 27:3, which they did not keep; and it is supposed that they even joined with the Chaldeans.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Ezekiel 25:9, 1 voice
Ezekiel 25:9
“I will open the side ... - i. e., lay it open to the attack of the enemy from the cities, from his cities, from his frontier (or, in every quarter). There is an ironical stress on “his” cities, because these cities belonged not to Moab but to Israel, having been assigned to the Reubenites Num 32:38; Jos 13:20. They lay to the north of the river Arnon, which was the proper boundary of Moab Num 21:13. The Moabites had in the last days of the kingdom of Israel recovered this territory Isa 16:1-”
Ezekiel 25:10, 2 voices
Ezekiel 25:10
“Unto the men of the east with the Ammonites, and I will give them in possession,.... Or, "against the Ammonites", as the Targum; that is, way should be made for the same people of the east, the Chaldeans or Arabians, that came against the Ammonites and destroyed them, to enter into the land of Moab and possess it, as they had done the land of Ammon: that the Ammonites may not be remembered among the nations: the name of that people, which is entirely lost; and Moab likewise, which underwent the same fate.”
Ezekiel 25:10
“MAURER, as English Version, "with the Ammonites," that is, Moab, "together with the land of Ammon," is to be thrown "open to the men of the east," to enter and take possession (Jer 49:1-39).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Ezekiel 25:11, 1 voice
Ezekiel 25:11
“I will execute judgments upon Moab,.... For though the Chaldeans and Arabians were the instruments of their ruin, their destruction was of the Lord; it was his hand that was upon them, and his vengeance that was executed on them, for their hard sayings against his people; for though he had spoke against them in his providence, and chastised them for their sins, yet he will not suffer others to speak against them: and they shall know that I am the Lord; that takes part with Judah, and will avenge himself of all their enemies.”
C. Edom's vengeance repaid by Israel's hand
1. (vv. 12-14)
a.hath greatly offended, and revenged himself: Edom's charge is vengeance carried out, dealt against the house of Judah by taking vengeance, and hath greatly offended, and revenged himself, language the Minor Prophets fill out further in Obadiah's account of Edom standing aside and even helping when Jerusalem fell. The sentence against Edom stands apart from the other three: Teman and Dedan are named directly, and the Lord says he will lay my vengeance upon Edom by the hand of my people Israel, judgment carried out through Israel's own hand rather than a foreign army as with Ammon and Moab. Henry connects the detail to Israel's later subjugation of Edom under the Hasmonean kings, one people used as the instrument against the neighbor who had turned on it.
Ezekiel 25:12, 1 voice
Ezekiel 25:12
“But the Jews had a divine warrant to reign over the Edomites, for that therefore they ought not to have made reprisals; and it was the more disingenuous for them to retain the old enmity when God had particularly commanded his people to forget it. 7 , Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite. The judgments threatened against them for this sin.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Ezekiel 25:13, 2 voices
Ezekiel 25:13
“From Teman ... - Or “from Teman” even unto “Dedan,” “shall they fall.” Teman and Dedan were districts (not cities), the former in the south (Eze 20:46 note), the latter in the north (“over the whole country”).”
Ezekiel 25:13
“Teman . . . they of Dedan--rather, "I will make it desolate from Teman (in the south) even to Dedan (in the northwest)" [GROTIUS], (Jer 49:8), that is, the whole country from north to south, stretching from the south of the Dead Sea to the Elanitic gulf of the Red Sea.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Ezekiel 25:14, 2 voices
Ezekiel 25:14
“I will lay my vengeance upon Edom - God will not allow men to insult those whom he has cast down. His judgment is sufficient; to add more is an insult to God. By the hand of may people Israel - This was fulfilled by the Maccabees, who not only defeated them and brought them under complete subjection, but obliged them to receive circumcision, Joseph. Antiq. 50 xiii., c. 17; 1 Maccabees 5:65; 2 Maccabees 10:16.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Ezekiel 25:14
“But besides that there were saviours to come upon Mount Zion, who should judge the mount of Esau ( Obad. 21 ), and Israel's Redeemer comes with dyed garments from Bozrah ( Isa. lxiii. 1 ), this implies a promise that Israel should recover itself again to such a degree as to be in a capacity of curbing the insolence of its neighbours.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
D. The Philistines' old hatred answered
1. (vv. 15-17)
a.despiteful heart, to destroy it for the old hatred: The Philistines close the set of four with the same charge, revenge and a despiteful heart, to destroy it for the old hatred, a hostility the text traces back past any single provocation into ancient enmity. The sentence names the Cherethims, a Philistine group elsewhere tied to David's own bodyguard in 2 Samuel 8:18, and promises the remnant of the sea coast destroyed, ending the nation whose name the region still carries in Palestine. Clarke reads the chapter's four oracles as one unit closing on the recognition formula a third time in seventeen verses, every neighboring taunt against Judah's fall answered by the same purpose, that they shall know that I am the Lord.
Ezekiel 25:15, 2 voices
Ezekiel 25:15
“The Philistines occupying lands to the south of Judah were a Hamite race Gen 10:14, but of a different branch from the Canaanites. They were a powerful people never dispossessed by the Israelites Jos 13:3. They were a thorn in the side of the chosen people throughout, and joined in attacking Jerusalem in the day of her trouble.”
Ezekiel 25:15
“The "old hatred" refers to their continual enmity to the covenant-people. They lay along Judea on the seacoast at the opposite side from Ammon and Moab.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Ezekiel 25:17, 1 voice
Ezekiel 25:17
“And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes,.... By way of retaliation for their vengeance and fury, wrath and malice, against his people; suggesting, that the judgments inflicted on them, for quantity and quality, should be very great: and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them; they shall see the hand of God in it, acknowledge his justice, and confess that their gods were idols, and that the God of Israel is the only true God.”
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Ezekiel 25. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Adam Clarke; Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869); Carl Friedrich Keil, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Ezekiel; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871); John Gill; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765); Matthew Henry and Patrick Fairbairn, An Exposition of Ezekiel.
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