The king will mourn, the prince will be clothed with despair, and the hands of the people of the land will tremble. I will deal with them according to their conduct, and I will judge them by their own standards. Then they will know that I am the LORD.’”
In this verse the Prophet affirms that God’s vengeance should be so common that it should alight equally upon the highest and the lowest. He begins with the king, then he descends to his counselors, then he comprehends the whole people. The king shall lament, he says.
Here is, I. The prisoner arraigned: Make a chain, in which to drag the criminal to the bar, and set him before the tribunal of divine justice; let him stand in fetters (as a notorious malefactor), stand pinioned to receive his doom.
Commenting on Ezekiel 7:23-27
people of the land--the general multitude, as distinguished from the "king" and the "prince." The consternation shall pervade all ranks. The king, whose duty it was to animate others and find a remedy for existing evils, shall himself be in the utmost anxiety; a mark of the desperate state of affairs. clothed with desolation--Clothing is designed to keep off shame; but in this case shame shall be the clothing.