Matthew Poole and continuators on Ezekiel 3:5

5 For thou art not sent to a people of a strange speech and of an hard language but to the house of Israel .

Though the divine Command is reason enough, why we should obey readily, yet God is pleased to give the Prophet arguments to perswade and ushers them in here.

Who cannot skill of thy speech, nor thou speak (without gift of Tongues) to them, shift not off thy work as if with Ionah sent to a people of barbarous Tongue, in which are dark and profound idioms, but as horrid to thy Ear, as deep and dark precipices and gulphes to the eye, as Heb. deep of lip intimates.

The same repeated in other words, they will need no interpreter to tell them what thou sayest to them, nor wilt thou need an interpreter to tell thee what answer they give. Thy work will be the easier, neither difficult as things that lye deep to be dig'd out, nor as things of great weight and heaviness to be lifted, as both Metaphors imply; this is his first argument. Next implyed in it I send thee to thine own Countrey men, whose welfare thou shouldst readily seek, ond in their awn Tongue thou mayst expresse thy care for them.

They still are a Family that God owneth he hath not broke up house-keeping, there is further incouragement, and they are Israels Seed the posterity of Iacob, and under Covenant Mercy, go therefore readily for Israel shall be gathered.

Marginal references: Heb. deep of lip, and heavy of tongue, and so verse 6.