John Calvin Commentary Ezekiel 7:24

"Wherefore I will bring the worst of the nations, and they shall possess their houses: I will also make the pride of the strong to cease; and their holy places shall be profaned." — Ezekiel 7:24 (ASV)

He repeats what he had said, that enemies would come who should be ministers of God’s vengeance. And again we learn from this place, that even the impious are impelled by the hand and secret direction of God, so that they cannot move a finger except by His will. He had previously said that He would give the Jews into the hands of strangers; but what now?

I will cause them to come, he says, as if He would stretch out His hand to them and induce them. We see, therefore, that God holds the impious under His guidance, as it were, for executing His judgments; but we must consider the difference which I have recently laid down, for God so works by them, yet still has nothing in common with them.

For they are carried on by a depraved impulse, but God has a method, wonderful and incomprehensible to us, which impels them here and there, so that He does not involve Himself in any alliance with their fault. For He calls them the perverse nation, so that the Jews might know that the final slaughter was approaching, since they would have to deal with the most cruel enemies.

He says, shall possess their homes. And because the pride of the people might seem an obstacle to God’s exacting the deserved penalty, he therefore adds, I will make the pride of the powerful to cease, he says. For as long as the Jews were swollen with haughtiness and self-confidence, the Prophet could not benefit them at all.

Therefore he says that God would make their haughtiness cease, by which they were vainly puffed up as long as God sustained or tolerated them. Finally, he adds, their sanctuaries shall be polluted. This passage confirms the opinion which I previously approved. For Ezekiel speaks of the pollution of the sanctuary as a new thing.

For here he draws away from them the vain hope by which they deceived themselves, when they boasted that they lived under God’s guardianship, since the temple protected them and the city. Jeremiah reproves them for trusting in lying words, while they declare that they have the Lord’s temple—

“The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord.” (Jeremiah 7:4).

Our Prophet does not speak openly, but he undoubtedly shows that their security was false, while they set up the temple against God, as if the temple were a shield to repel His vengeance. God, indeed, lived in the temple, but this condition was added: that He was to be purely worshipped there. But when the temple was polluted, God departed from it, as we will see later.

For this reason the Prophet says, the enemies would come who would pollute and contaminate the holy places of the people. Until now he had not spoken of the temple, but he now adds mention of the temple, so that the Jews would not rashly boast in the name of God, as if they held Him bound to themselves.