apter before us. The former
passages show that the acts of violence of the kings, their oppressions
and extortions, come here into consideration (compare Ezek. xxxiv. 2,
3: "Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! Should
not the shepherds feed the flocks? Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you
with the wool, ye kill them that are fed, &c., and with force and with
cruelty ye rule them"), while the latter passage shows that it is
chiefly the heaviest guilt of the kings which comes into consideration,
viz., all that by which they became the cause of the people's being
carried away into captivity. To this belonged, besides their foolish
political counsels, which were based upon ungodliness (comp. chap. x.
21), the negative (_Venema_: "It was their duty to take care that the
true religion, the spiritual food of the people, was rightly and
properly exercised"), and positive promotion of ungodliness, and of
immorality proceeding from it, by which the divine judgments were
forcibly drawn down. It is in this contrast of idea and reality
(_Calvin_: "It is a contradiction that the shepherd should be a
destroyer"), that the woe has its foundation, and that the more, that
it is pointed out that the flock, which they destroy and scatter, is
_God's_ flock. (_Calvin_: "God intimates that, by the unworthy
scattering of the flock, an atrocious injury had been committed against
himself") [Hebrew: caN mreiti] must not be explained by: "the flock of
my feeding," _i.e._, which I feed. For, wherever [Hebrew: mreit] occurs
by itself, it always has the signification "pasture," but never the
signification _pastio_, _pastus_ commonly assigned to it. This
signification, which is quite in agreement with the form of the word,
must therefore be retained in those passages also where it occurs in
connection with [Hebrew: caN], when it always denotes the relation of
Israel to God. Israel is called the flock of God's pasture, because He
has given to them the fertile Canaan as their possession, compare my
remarks on Ps. lxxiv. 1. It is, at first sight, strange that a guilt of
the rulers only is spoken of, and not a guilt of the people; for every
more searching consideration shows that both are inseparable from one
another; that bad rulers proceed from the development of the nation,
and are, at the same time, a punishment [Pg 406] of its wickedness sent
by God. But the fact is easily accounted for, if only we keep in mind
that the Prophet had