Commentaries on the First Twenty Chapters of the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel

by Jean Calvin

The book has no illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from the publisher's website (GeneralBooksClub.com). You can also preview excerpts of the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. 1; Original Edinburgh, Calvin Translation Society; Publication 1849; Bible;

254 pages, Paperback

First published January 3, 2010

About the author

John Calvin, João Calvino, Iohanes Calvinus, Jehan Cauvin.

1509-1564

Reviews

[Coyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

"An interest of no odrinary kind is excited in the mind of the Biblical Student by the mention of "CALVIN'S LECTURES ON EZEKIEL." The last Work which a great man leaves unfinished, because arrested by the hand of death, becomes at once an heir-loom to posterity." (v)
So begins the translator's preface to Calvin's series of talks on Ezekiel. This volume is, quite frankly, wonderful. Calvin takes one of the most difficult books of the Bible (famously forbidden, along with "Song of Songs", to Jewish Rabbinical students until they were 30 years old) and opens it in a way that is at once devotional and thoughtful. As the translator says:

Men of Calvin's faith and devotion believed that beneath the surface of their imagery, and parables, and oriental diction, lay concealed a living power which energized all this glowing machinery, which marshalled the thoughts within the speaker's mind, and then clothed them in the burning words and the glowing phrases which spoke alternately either joy or sadness into the hearer's soul.... The general principle of Calvin's Interpretation of the Visions of Ezekiel is an immediate appeal to the miraculous interposition of God. He saw in them God acting directly and powerfully on the Prophet's mind, and through him on the people. He did not consider them as merely illustrating God's general Providence and government of the world, or as pourtraying any ordinary operations of his grace in the souls of the people; he looked upon them as representing a miraculous and visible interference with the ordinary laws of the Nation's discipline (xi-xii).

Calvin highlights for us the hand of God at work in the world through the sometimes difficult and obscure prophecies of Ezekiel.
This commentary is definitely worth the read.