Eze 39:17-20 | Clarke | STEP | Verse 17 Gather yourselves - to my sacrifice - This is an allusion to a custom common in the east: when a sacrifice is made, the friends and neighbors of the party sacrificing are invited to come and feast on the sacrifice.

Ezekiel 39:17-20

Verse 17

Gather yourselves - to my sacrifice - This is an allusion to a custom common in the east: when a sacrifice is made, the friends and neighbors of the party sacrificing are invited to come and feast on the sacrifice. Verse 18

Ye shall - drink the blood of the princes of the earth - I need not mention the custom of the Scandinavians: they were accustomed to drink the blood of their enemies out of the skulls of the dead. But this is spoken of fowls and beasts here - rams, lambs, and goats. The feast shall be as grateful and as plenteous to the fowls and beasts, as one made of the above animals, the fattest and best of their kind, (because fed in the fertile fields of Bashan), would be to the guests of him who makes a sacrifice. Verse 19

And ye shall eat fat - and drink blood - Who shall eat and drink, etc.? Not the Jews: though Voltaire says they ate human flesh, and are invited here by the prophet to eat the flesh and drink the blood of their enemies; which is a most unprincipled falsehood. It is the fowls and the beasts that God invites, Eze 39:17 : "Speak to every feathered fowl, and to every beast of the field, assemble yourselves - that ye may eat flesh and drink blood;" nor are the persons altered in all these Eze 39:17-20 : so the assertion of Voltaire is either through brutish ignorance or Satanic malice.