Ezekiel 22:23 - Meaning and Application

Here is, first, a general picture of the land of Israel. It deserved the judgments that were coming on it, and it also needed those judgments if it was ever to be purified. The prophet is told to say plainly, “You are a land that has not been cleansed, not refined like metal, so you need to go back into the furnace.” Every effort to reform the people had failed. They were not “rained upon in the day of indignation,” which may mean that God withheld rain as a judgment (Jer 14:4), or that even in judgment they received no teaching from the prophets, whose words should have fallen like rain.

It may also mean that when they were corrected, they were still not made clean. Their filth was not washed away like dirt from the streets after a heavy rain. In fact, their guilt seemed to grow worse in a time of trouble, like a city that becomes more foul in dry weather because no rain comes to cleanse it. Or the meaning may be that they had no comfort from God in the day of distress, no rain of mercy or consolation to refresh them. The rich man in torment had no drop of water to cool his tongue, and Israel had no such relief.

Next comes a specific charge against every class of people among them. All had helped fill up the nation’s guilt, and none had helped to reduce it. So all are guilty together. Each one had turned from the right path, and those who should have been the best examples of good living were leaders in evil and patterns of vice.

The prophets, who claimed to speak for God, were not only liars, but also destroyers (Eze 22:25). They hardened the people in sin by their preaching, promising safety and success in sinful ways, and by their own conduct, which was as corrupt as anyone’s. There was even a conspiracy among their prophets against God, against true religion, against the faithful prophets, and against good people. They agreed to speak with one voice, like Ahab’s prophets, so they could assure the people of peace while they lived in sin. The unity that false teachers boast about is often only a secret agreement against the truth. Satan is not divided against himself.

These prophets also joined hands with murderers and oppressors, protecting their wickedness and using false prophecies to justify it, so long as they could share in the profit. They were like a roaring lion tearing up its prey. They frightened the innocent, made them hated by the people, and then gained power over them. In this way they destroyed lives. They helped bring about the death of many innocent people, and they left many wives widows. Or they ruined souls by flattering sinners into a false sense of peace and a vain hope, while leading them into sin that would end in eternal ruin. Those who lead people into wickedness, or encourage them in it, are murderers of souls.

They also devoured people’s property. When Naboth was killed, they seized his vineyard. They took treasure and precious things as if these were lost goods they were free to claim. In some way they devoured widows’ houses, like the Pharisees later did (Mat 23:14). Or they took these gifts as payment for false and flattering prophecies, for if a person did not feed them, they would even prepare war against him (Mic 3:5). That was the condition of Jerusalem when such men were accepted as prophets.

The priests, who should have taught the law and guarded holy things, were just as bad (Eze 22:26). First, they broke God’s law, which they should have kept and taught to others. They made no real effort to obey the law of the priesthood. They openly violated it, as Hophni and Phinehas, Eli’s corrupt sons, had done. They did whatever they wanted, as if God’s word did not matter. And how could such men teach others duty when they lived in open contradiction to their own calling?

Second, they profaned God’s holy things, the things they were supposed to handle with care and protect from abuse. They allowed unworthy people to eat what was holy. The Lord’s table was treated as something ordinary and contemptible. By handling holy things with impure hands, they defiled those things themselves.

Third, they did not make a proper distinction between the holy and the common, or between the clean and the unclean, as God’s law required. They did not keep unfit people out of God’s courts, and they did not teach the people the distinctions God had set about food, places, and times. They lived carelessly themselves and encouraged the people to do the same.

Fourth, they closed their eyes to God’s sabbaths. They did not care whether the sabbaths were kept holy or not. They gave no support to those who honored them, no warning to those who broke them, and no sign that they themselves regarded them with reverence. They let people work on that day and looked the other way when they should have watched over the people’s conduct. God’s sabbaths have a beauty and honor given to them by God’s own command, yet they ignored that value and refused to see it.

By all this, God himself was profaned among them. His authority was treated lightly, his goodness was taken for granted, and his holiness was insulted in the highest degree. When Scripture, sabbaths, and holy things are dishonored, God himself is dishonored, because they belong to him.

The princes, who should have used their authority to correct these wrongs, were also bold lawbreakers (Eze 22:27). They were like wolves tearing apart their prey, because power without justice and goodness becomes cruel. Their whole purpose was to satisfy themselves. They fed their pride and ambition by making themselves arbitrary and feared. They satisfied their hatred and revenge by shedding blood and destroying lives, offering up all who stood in their way or offended them in any manner. They also pursued greed, aiming only at dishonest gain by crushing and oppressing the people.

Money, by fairness or by fraud, was their goal. It was sweet to them, whatever the source. Yet even if they had enough power to keep going in their oppression, how could they face the matter before their own honor and consciences? Ezekiel 22:28 explains how they managed it: the prophets covered them over with weak mortar. That is, they spoke in God’s name, which was a terrible sin, and told them there was no wrong in what they did. They said the rulers could use people’s lives and property as they pleased, and that they did no wrong at all. Worse still, they claimed that by going after the people they had chosen as enemies, the rulers were doing God’s work. In this way, they silenced their consciences.

The prophets also defended these actions to the people. They praised them as if everything was for the public good. That protected the rulers’ reputation and kept the people they crushed from complaining. Deceiving prophets are the main support of greedy princes, but in the end they will betray them. They build with weak mortar, and a wall built that way will not stand long. They claim to be seers, but they see false things. They claim to be diviners, but they speak lies. They pretend to have a message from heaven and say, “This is what the Lord God says,” but the Lord has not spoken any such thing.

The people who had power of their own also learned from their princes how to abuse it, in Ezekiel 22:29. Those who should have spoken up for the oppressed, and defended liberty and property, became attackers themselves. “The people of the land” used oppression and robbery. The rich crushed the poor, masters their servants, landlords their tenants, and even parents their own children. Buyers and sellers, too, found ways to cheat one another. When such sin becomes national, it is a national judgment. Isaiah 3:5 says the people will be oppressed by one another. Their sin was worse because they troubled the poor and needy, whom they should have helped, and oppressed the stranger and robbed him of justice. They should have treated him not only fairly, but kindly. So the whole nation had turned away, and the disease had spread everywhere.

There was no one who stepped in to plead for them, as verse 30 says: “I sought for a man among them who would stand in the gap, but I found none.” Sin makes a gap in the hedge of protection around a people. Through that opening, good things run out and evil things rush in. It is also the place where God comes in to judge and destroy. Yet there is a way to stand in the gap and repair the breach against God’s judgments, through repentance, prayer, and reform. Moses stood in the gap when he prayed for Israel and turned away God’s wrath (Psalm 106:23).

When God is about to move against a sinful people, he looks for someone to plead for them. He asks whether there is even one who will do it, because he is so ready to show mercy. If there is only one man who stands in the gap, as Abraham did for Sodom, God will notice him and be pleased with him. It is a bad sign for a people when judgments are breaking in and the spirit of prayer is gone, so that no one is found to speak a good word for them. When that happens, what can be expected except complete ruin?

So God says, “Therefore I have poured out my anger upon them” (Ezekiel 22:31). He let it flow without restraint, so it came on them in full force. Yet whatever God’s wrath brings on a people, it is still the payment for their own ways. God deals with them no worse, and in fact much better, than their sins deserve.