John Calvin Commentary Ezekiel 16:6

"And when I passed by thee, and saw thee weltering in thy blood, I said unto thee, [Though thou art] in thy blood, live; yea, I said unto thee, [Though thou art] in thy blood, live." — Ezekiel 16:6 (ASV)

I have already explained the time to which the Prophet alludes, when the descendants of Abraham began to be tyrannically oppressed by the Egyptians. For God here assumes the character of a traveler when He says that He passed by. For He had said that the Jews and all the Israelites were like a girl cast out and deserted.

Now, therefore, the Prophet adds that this spectacle met God as He passed by: just as those who travel cast their eyes on either side, and if anything unusual occurs, they pay attention and consider it. Meanwhile, God declares that He was taking care of His people. And truly, the matter is sufficiently evident, since He seemed to have neglected those wretched ones, even while He had wonderfully assisted them.

For they might have perished a hundred times a day, and if He had not taken notice of them, they would not have dragged out their lives to the end. That celebrated sentence is well known: I have seen, I have seen, the affliction of My people. When He sent for Moses and commanded him to liberate the people, He prefaces it in this way: I have seen, I have seen (Exodus 3:7).

Hence, He had long ago seen, though He seemed to despise them by shutting His eyes. There is no doubt that the doubling of the word here means that God always watched for the safety of this desperate people, although He did not assist them directly. He now means the same thing when He says, that He passed by: I passed by, then, near you, and saw you defiled with blood.

That spectacle could not turn away God’s eyes, for whatever is contrary to nature excites horror. God therefore here shows how compassionate He was towards the people, because He was not horrified by that disgraceful foulness when He saw the infant so immersed in its own gore, without any shape.

As to the following phrase, I said to you, He does not mean that He spoke openly so that the people heard His voice, but He announces what He had determined concerning the people. The expression, live in your blood, may indeed be taken contemptuously, as if God had grudged moving His hand, lest the very touch should prove contagious; for we do not willingly touch any putrid gore.

The words, live in your blood, may be thus explained, as at first God did not deign to take care of the people. But it is evident from the context that God here expresses the secret power by which the people were preserved, contrary to common expectations. For if we consider what has been previously said, the people surely would not have lived a single day unless they had received strength from this voice of God.

For if a newborn child is cast out, how can it bear the cold of the night? Surely it will instantly expire. And I have already said that death is prepared for infants unless their umbilical cord is cut. Since, therefore, a hundred deaths encompassed the people, they could never have remained alive had not the secret voice of God sustained them.

God, therefore, in commanding them to live, already shows that He was willingly and wonderfully preserving them amidst various kinds of death. As it is said in the 68th Psalm (Psalms 68:20), In His hands are the issues of death, so that death is converted into life, since He is the sovereign and lord of both.

But this phrase is doubled, since the people were afflicted in Egypt for no short period. If that tyranny had endured only a few years, they must have been consumed. But their slavery was protracted for many years, which is why that remarkable wonder occurred: that their remembrance and their name were not, as often happens in such circumstances, cut off.

We see then that God has reason enough to speak that sentence in which the safety of the people was included: live in your bloods, live in your bloods. The fact itself shows the people to have been preserved because it pleased God. The history that Moses relates in the book of Exodus is a mirror in which we may behold the living image of that life, which we have mentioned as drawing its whole vitality from the secret good pleasure of God.

Now the question is asked: why did God not openly and directly take up His people and treat them as kindly as He did during their youth? The reason is sufficiently clear: if the people had been freed at the very beginning, the memory of the benefit would have soon vanished, and God’s power would have been more obscure.

For we know that humans, unless thoroughly convinced of their own misery, never acknowledge that they have obtained safety through God’s pity.

The people, then, had to live in such a way as always to have death before their eyes—indeed, as if they were bound by the chains of death. It lived, then, in bloods, that is, in the tomb, like a carcass remaining in its own putridness, its life in the meantime lying hidden. So it happened to the descendants of Abraham.

Now, then, we understand God’s intention in not raising up the descendants of Abraham with grandeur from the beginning, but allowing them to drag out a miserable life and to be steeped in the very pollution of death.