nevertheless sinned against the light they had; and the consequences of transgression are never measured by the sinner’s own estimate of his culpability. There was enough in the history of Israel to have impressed the neighbouring peoples with a sense of the superiority of its religion and the difference in character between Jehovah and all other gods. If the Edomites had utterly failed to learn that lesson, they were themselves partly to blame; and the spiritual insensibility and dulness of conscience which everywhere suppressed the knowledge of Jehovah’s name is the very thing which in the view of Ezekiel needs to be removed by signal and exemplary acts of judgment. It is not necessary to enter minutely into the details of the judgment threatened against Edom. We may simply note that it corresponds point for point with the demeanour exhibited by the Edomites in the time of Israel’s final retribution. The “perpetual hatred” is rewarded by perpetual desolation (ver. 9); their seizure of Jehovah’s land is punished by their annihilation in the land that was their own (vv. 6‐8); and their malicious satisfaction over the depopulation of Palestine recoils on their own heads when their mountain land is made desolate “to the rejoicing of the whole earth” (vv. 14, 15). And the lesson that will be taught to the world by the contrast between the renewed Israel and the barren mountain of Seir will be the power and holiness of the one true God: “they shall know that I am Jehovah.” II The prophet’s mind is still occupied with the sin of Edom as he turns in the thirty‐sixth chapter to depict the future of the land of Israel. The opening verses of the chapter (vv. 1‐7) betray an intensity of patriotic feeling not often expressed by Ezekiel. The utterance of the single idea which he wishes to express seems to be impeded by the multitude of reflections that throng upon him as he apostrophises “the mountains and the hills, the watercourses and the valleys, the desolate ruins and deserted cities” of his native country (ver. 4). The land is conceived as conscious of the shame and reproach that rest upon it; and all the elements that might be supposed to make up the consciousness of the land—its naked desolation, the tread of alien feet, the ravages of war, and the derisive talk of the surrounding heathen (Edom being specially in view)—present themselves to the mind of the prophet before he can utter the message with which he is charged: “Thus saith the Lord Jehovah; Behold, I speak in My jealousy and My anger, because ye have borne the shame of the heathen: therefore ... I lift up My hand, Surely the nations that are round about you—even they shall bear their shame” (vv. 6, 7).