As keepers of a field, are they against her round about; because she hath been rebellious against me, saith the LORD.
As keepers guarding a field station themselves round about it on every side, so besieging enemies surround Jerusalem, and this siege comes because she has rebelled against the Lord. The chapter to which the warning belongs treats the destruction of Israel and Jerusalem as a faint shadow of the greater destruction of the last days. The verse is an awful denunciation of sin that expresses sorrow of heart over transgression and makes a touching appeal to return to God, which the mass of the people fail to answer.
The rebellion means that union of God's church with the world is fornication and adultery against God. The backslidden church so described takes counsel but not of God and goes down to Egypt to strengthen herself in the strength of civil power and to trust in its shadow, instead of looking to the Holy One of Israel and seeking the Lord. The besieging judgment belongs not only to old Jerusalem and the Jewish nation before Christ but to the church in all ages, since Zion and Jerusalem represent the church, and specifically to the time just before the second coming.
The chapter warns of the period just before the day of the Lord, when the nations are prepared and prepare themselves for the great coming war, the battle of Armageddon. The encirclement because of rebellion means wickedness in all the cities becomes so appalling that it calls for the personal visitation of Jehovah in fierce anger to lay waste, break down cities, and destroy evil at the end of time. The fornication and violence connected with the prophecy is literally fulfilled when troops of vice-laden men assemble at harlots' houses, as shown by vice commissions in Chicago and other cities, and when people gasp for breath for fear of murderers, proving corruption has become so gross and widespread that it must very soon bring Jehovah's presence to visit it with destruction.
The surrounding keepers picture the judgment that has fallen on the land because of rebellion, leaving it desolate after the wicked are slain at Christ's coming, with no one left on earth during the thousand years. The chapter describes the awful confusion and trouble that comes on the earth when men are no longer worthy of God's favor. The regular course of seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night continues only while men live in probation and enjoy God's favor, and the passage belongs to the time when God sets men aside and the earth is counted as destroyed and rejected, out of which confusion and chaos God will create new heavens and a new earth.
As keepers guarding a field station themselves round about it on every side, so besieging enemies surround Jerusalem, and this siege comes because she has rebelled against the Lord. The chapter to which the warning belongs treats the destruction of Israel and Jerusalem as a faint shadow of the greater destruction of the last days. The verse is an awful denunciation of sin that expresses sorrow of heart over transgression and makes a touching appeal to return to God, which the mass of the people fail to answer.
The rebellion means that union of God's church with the world is fornication and adultery against God. The backslidden church so described takes counsel but not of God and goes down to Egypt to strengthen herself in the strength of civil power and to trust in its shadow, instead of looking to the Holy One of Israel and seeking the Lord. The besieging judgment belongs not only to old Jerusalem and the Jewish nation before Christ but to the church in all ages, since Zion and Jerusalem represent the church, and specifically to the time just before the second coming.
The chapter warns of the period just before the day of the Lord, when the nations are prepared and prepare themselves for the great coming war, the battle of Armageddon. The encirclement because of rebellion means wickedness in all the cities becomes so appalling that it calls for the personal visitation of Jehovah in fierce anger to lay waste, break down cities, and destroy evil at the end of time. The fornication and violence connected with the prophecy is literally fulfilled when troops of vice-laden men assemble at harlots' houses, as shown by vice commissions in Chicago and other cities, and when people gasp for breath for fear of murderers, proving corruption has become so gross and widespread that it must very soon bring Jehovah's presence to visit it with destruction.
The surrounding keepers picture the judgment that has fallen on the land because of rebellion, leaving it desolate after the wicked are slain at Christ's coming, with no one left on earth during the thousand years. The chapter describes the awful confusion and trouble that comes on the earth when men are no longer worthy of God's favor. The regular course of seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night continues only while men live in probation and enjoy God's favor, and the passage belongs to the time when God sets men aside and the earth is counted as destroyed and rejected, out of which confusion and chaos God will create new heavens and a new earth.