John Calvin Commentary Ezekiel 7:23

"Make the chain; for the land is full of bloody crimes, and the city is full of violence." — Ezekiel 7:23 (ASV)

Interpreters connect the Prophet’s command to make a chain with the captivity, for we know that captives are usually bound with chains and fetters, or manacles. Therefore, they explain it as God threatening the people with exile. But the Spirit seems rather to allude to criminals who plead their cases in chains.

For the Jews had long reveled in their vices, and the absence of punishment had made them very audacious. Now the Prophet says the time had come when they were to be brought to God's tribunal and there to be dealt with most justly as criminals. Since, therefore, they bound criminals with chains so that they might plead their cause ignominiously—criminals, I say, who were already, as it were, half-condemned—for this reason the Prophet is ordered to make a chain, so that the people would not only be called to give a full account of their wickedness but would also be drawn, whether they wished it or not, to God’s judgment seat.

And he explains himself when he says, since the land is full of the judgment of bloods. The Hebrews call judgment of bloods the grounds for death, when the charge is capital and the criminal is so convicted that he cannot escape final punishment; thus, any capital conviction is called a judgment of blood.

He says, therefore, the earth is full of a judgment of bloods, that is, it is guilty of so many crimes that it cannot escape final vengeance.

And afterwards he adds the city, which, in the general corruption of the land, ought to retain some of its purity. But he says, the city also is so full of violence, a term which doubtless includes all unjust oppressions: plunder, pillage, unlawful gains, robberies, and whatever opposes justice and equity.

The result is that the people’s impiety and wickedness had come to such a point that they were no longer endurable by God; therefore, God ascends his tribunal to exact punishment from them, and this is the chain of which he speaks.