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Expositor's Bible Commentary Ezekiel 13:1 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 8 PROPHECY AND ITS ABUSES Ezekiel 12:21 - Ezekiel 14:11 THERE is perhaps nothing more perplexing to the student of Old Testament history than the complicated phenomena which may be classed under the general name of "prophecy." In Israel, as in every ancient state, there was a body of men who sought to influence public opinion by prognostications of the future. As a rule the repute of all kinds of divination declined with the advance of civilisation and general intelligence, so that in the more enlightened communities matters of importance came to be decided on broad grounds of reason and political expediency. The peculiarity in the case of Israel was that the very highest direction in politics, as well as religion and morals, was given in a form capable of being confounded with superstitious practices which flourished alongside of it. The true prophets were not merely profound moral thinkers, who announced a certain issue as the probable result of a certain line of conduct. In many cases their predictions are absolute, and their political programme is an appeal to the nation to accept the situation which they foresee, as the basis of its public action. For this reason prophecy was readily brought into competition with practices with which it had really nothing in common. The ordinary individual who cared little for principles and only wished to know what was likely to happen might readily think that one way of arriving at knowledge of the future was as, good as another, and when the spiritual prophet’s anticipations displeased him he was apt to try his luck with the sorcerer. It is not improbable that in the last days of the monarchy spurious prophecy of various kinds gained an additional vitality from its rivalry with the great spiritual teachers who in the name of Jehovah foretold the ruin of the state. This is not the place for an exhaustive account of the varied developments in Israel of what may be broadly termed prophetic manifestations. For the understanding of the section of Ezekiel now before us it will be enough to distinguish three classes of phenomena. At the lowest end of the scale there was a rank growth of pure magic or sorcery, the ruling idea of which is the attempt to control or forecast the future by occult arts which are believed to influence the supernatural powers which govern human destiny. In the second place we have prophecy in a stricter sense-that is, the supposed revelation of the will of the deity in dreams or "visions" or half-articulate words uttered in a state of frenzy. Last of all there is the true prophet, who, though subject to extraordinary mental experiences, yet had always a clear and conscious grasp of moral principles, and possessed an incommunicable certainty that what he spoke was not his own word but the word of Jehovah. It is obvious that a people subjected to such influences as these was exposed to temptations both intellectual and moral from which modern life is exempt. One thing is certain-the existence of prophecy did not tend to simplify the problems of national life or individual conduct. We are apt to think of the great prophets as men so signally marked out by God as His witnesses that it must have been impossible for any one with a shred of sincerity to question their authority. In reality it was quite otherwise. It was no more an easy thing then than now to distinguish between truth and error, between the voice of God and the speculations of men. Then, as now, divine truth had no available credentials at the moment of its utterance except its self-evidencing power on hearts that were sincere in their desire to know it. The fact that truth came in the guise of prophecy only stimulated the growth of counterfeit prophecy, so that only those who were "of the truth" could discern the spirits whether they were of God. The passage which forms the subject of this chapter is one of the most important passages of the Old Testament in its treatment of the errors and abuses incident to a dispensation of prophecy. It consists of three parts: the first deals with difficulties occasioned by the apparent failure of prophecy; { Ezekiel 12:21-28 } the second with the character and doom of the false prophets (chapter 13); and the third with the state of mind which made a right use of prophecy impossible. { Ezekiel 14:1-11 } I. It is one of Ezekiel’s peculiarities that he pays close attention to the proverbial sayings which indicated the drift of the national mind. Such sayings were like straws, showing how the stream flowed, and had a special significance for Ezekiel, inasmuch as he was not in the stream himself, but only observed its motions from a distance. Here he quotes a current proverb, giving expression to a sense of the futility of all prophetic warnings: "The days are drawn out, and every vision faileth". { Ezekiel 12:22 } It is difficult to say what the feeling is that lies behind it, whether it is one of disappointment or of relief. If, as seems probable, Ezekiel 12:27 is the application of the general principle to the particular case of Ezekiel, the proverb need not indicate absolute disbelief in the truth of prophecy. "The vision which he sees is for many days, and remote times does he prophesy"-that is to say, The prophet’s words are no doubt perfectly true, and come from God; but no man can ever tell when they are to be fulfilled: all experience shows that they relate to a remote future which we are not likely to see. For men whose concern was to find direction in the present emergency, that was no doubt equivalent to a renunciation of the guidance of prophecy. There are several things which may have tended to give currency to this view and make it plausible. First of all, of course, the fact that many of the "visions" that were published had nothing in them; they were false in their origin, and were bound to fail. Accordingly one thing necessary to rescue prophecy from the discredit into which it had fallen was the removal of those who uttered false predictions in the name of Jehovah: "There shall no more be any false vision or flattering divination in the midst of the house of Israel" ( Ezekiel 12:24 ). But besides the prevalence of false prophecy there were features of true prophecy which partly explained the common misgiving as to its trustworthiness. Even in true prophecy there is an element of idealism, the future being depicted in forms derived from the prophet’s circumstances, and represented as the immediate continuation of the events of his own time. In support of the proverb it might have been equally apt to instance the Messianic oracles of Isaiah, or the confident predictions of Hananiah, the opponent of Jeremiah. Further, there is a contingent element in prophecy: the fulfilment of a threat or promise is conditional on the moral effect of the prophecy itself on the people. These things were perfectly understood by thoughtful men in Israel. The principle of contingency is clearly expounded in the eighteenth chapter of Jeremiah, and it was acted on by the princes who on a memorable occasion saved him from the doom of a false prophet. { Jeremiah 26:1-24 } Those who used prophecy to determine their practical attitude towards Jehovah’s purposes found it to be an unerring guide to right thinking and action. But those who only took a curious interest in questions of external fulfilment found much to disconcert them; and it is hardly surprising that many of them became utterly sceptical of its divine origin. It must have been to this turn of mind that the proverb with which Ezekiel is dealing owed its origin. It is not on these lines, however, that Ezekiel vindicates the truth of the prophetic word, but on lines adapted to the needs of his own generation. After all prophecy is not wholly contingent. The bent of the popular character is one of the elements which it takes into account, and it foresees an issue which is not dependent on anything that Israel might do. The prophets rise to a point of view from which the destruction of the sinful people and the establishment of a perfect kingdom of God are seen to be facts unalterably decreed by Jehovah. And the point of Ezekiel’s answer to his contemporaries seems to be that a final demonstration of the truth of prophecy was at hand. As the fulfilment drew near prophecy would increase in distinctness and precision, so that when the catastrophe came it would be impossible for any man to deny the inspiration of those who had announced it: "Thus saith Jehovah, I will suppress this proverb, and it shall no more circulate in Israel; but say unto them, The days are near, and the content [literally word or matter] of every vision" ( Ezekiel 12:23 ). After the extinction of every form of lying prophecy, Jehovah’s words shall still be heard, and the proclamation of them shall be immediately followed by their accomplishment: "For I Jehovah will speak My words; I will speak and perform, it shall not be deferred any more: in your days, O house of rebellion, I will speak a word and perform it, saith Jehovah" ( Ezekiel 12:25 ). The immediate reference is to. the destruction of Jerusalem which the prophet saw to be one of those events which were unconditionally decreed, and an event which must bulk more and more largely in the vision of the. true prophet until it was accomplished. II. The thirteenth chapter deals with what was undoubtedly the greatest obstacle to the influence of prophecy- viz., the existence of a division in the ranks of the prophets themselves. That division had been of long standing. The earliest indication of it is the story of the contest between Micaiah and four hundred prophets of Jehovah, in presence of Ahab and Jehoshaphat. { 1 Kings 22:5-28 } All the canonical prophets show in their writings that they had to contend against the mass of the prophetic order-men who claimed an authority equal to theirs, but used it for diametrically opposite interests. It is not, however, till we come to Jeremiah and Ezekiel that we find a formal apologetic of true prophecy against false. The problem was serious: where two sets of prophets systematically and fundamentally contradicted each other, both might be false, but both could not be true. The prophet who was convinced of the truth of his own visions must be prepared to account for the rise of false visions, and to lay down some criterion by which men might discriminate between the one and the other. Jeremiah’s treatment of the question is of the two perhaps the more profound and interesting. It is thus summarised by Professor Davidson: "In his encounters with the prophets of his day Jeremiah opposes them in three spheres-that of policy, that of morals, and that of personal experience. In policy the genuine prophets had some fixed principles, all arising out of the idea that the. kingdom of the Lord was not a kingdom of this world. Hence they opposed military preparation, riding on horses, and building of fenced cities, and counselled trust in Jehovah. The false prophets, on the other hand, desired their country to be a military power among the powers around, they advocated alliance with the eastern empires and with Egypt, and relied on their national strength. Again, the true prophets, had a stringent personal and state morality. In their view the true cause of the destruction of the state was its immoralities. But the false prophets had no such deep moral convictions, and seeing nothing unwonted or alarming in the condition of things prophesied of ‘peace.’ They were not necessarily irreligious men; but their religion had no truer insight into the nature of the God of Israel than that of the common people And finally Jeremiah expresses his conviction that the prophets whom he opposed did not stand in the same relation to the Lord as he did: they had not "his experiences, of the word of the Lord, into whose counsel they had not been admitted; and they were without that fellowship of mind with the mind of Jehovah which was the true source of prophecy. Hence he satirises their pretended supernatural ‘dreams,’ and charges them from conscious want of any true prophetic word with stealing words from one another." ("Ezekiel," p. 85.) The passages in Jeremiah on which this statement is mainly founded may have been known to Ezekiel, who in this matter, as in so many others, follows the lines laid down by the elder prophet. The first thing, then, that deserves attention in Ezekiel’s judgment on false prophecy is his assertion of its purely subjective or human origin. In the opening sentence he pronounces a woe upon the prophets "who prophesy from their own mind without having seen" ( Ezekiel 13:3 ). The words put in italics sum up Ezekiel’s theory of the genesis of false prophecy. The visions these men see and the oracles they utter simply reproduce the thoughts, the emotions, the aspirations, natural to their own minds. That the ideas came to them in a peculiar form which was mistaken for the direct action of Jehovah, Ezekiel does not deny. He admits that the men were sincere in their professions, for he describes them as "waiting for the fulfillment of the word" ( Ezekiel 13:6 ). But in this belief they were the victims of a delusion. Whatever there might be in their prophetic experiences that resembled those of a true prophet, there was nothing in their oracles that did not belong to the sphere of worldly interests and human speculation. If we ask how Ezekiel knew this. the only possible answer is that he knew it because he was sure of the source of his own inspiration. He possessed an inward experience which certified to him the genuineness of the communications which came to him, and he necessarily inferred that those who held different beliefs about God must lack that experience. Thus far his criticism of false prophecy is purely subjective. The true prophet knew that he had that within him which authenticated his inspiration, but the false prophet could not know that he wanted it. The difficulty is not peculiar to prophecy, but arises in connection with religious belief as a whole. It is an interesting question whether the assent to a truth is accompanied by a feeling of certitude differing in quality from the confidence which a man may have in giving assent to a delusion. But it is not possible to elevate this internal criterion to an objective test of truth. A man who is awake may be quite sure he is not dreaming, but a man in a dream may readily enough fancy himself awake. But there were other and more obvious tests which could be applied to the professional prophets, and which at least showed them to be men of a different spirit from the few who were "full of power by the spirit of the Lord, and of judgment, and of might, to declare to Israel his sin." { Micah 3:8 } In two graphic figures Ezekiel sums up the character and policy of these parasites who disgraced the order to which they belonged. In the first place he compares them to jackals burrowing in ruins and undermining the fabric which it was their professed function to uphold ( Ezekiel 13:4-5 ). The existence of such a class of men is at once a symptom of advanced social degeneration and a cause of greater ruin to follow. A true prophet fearlessly speaking the Words of God is a defence to the state; he is like a man who stands in the breach or builds a wall to ward off the danger which he foresees. Such were all genuine prophets whose names were held in honour in Israel-men of moral courage, never hesitating to incur personal risk for the welfare of the nation they loved. If Israel now was like a heap of ruins, the fault lay with the selfish crowd of hireling prophets who had cared more to find a hole in which they could shelter themselves than to build up a stable and righteous polity. The prophet’s simile calls to mind the type of churchman represented by Bishop Blougram in Browning’s powerful satire. He is one who is content if the corporation to which he belongs can provide him with a comfortable and dignified position in which he can spend good days; he is triumphant if, in addition to this, he can defy any one to prove him more of a fool or a hypocrite than an average man of the world. Such utter abnegation of intellectual sincerity may not be common in any Church; but the temptation which leads to it is one to which ecclesiastics are exposed in every age and every communion. The tendency to shirk difficult problems, to shut one’s eyes to grave evils, to acquiesce in things as they are, and calculate that the ruin will last one’s own time, is what Ezekiel calls playing the jackal; and it hardly needs a prophet to tell us that there could not be a more fatal symptom of the decay of religion than the prevalence of such a spirit in its official representatives. The second image is equally suggestive. It exhibits the false prophets as following where they pretended to lead. as aiding and abetting the men into whose hands the reins of government had fallen. The people build a wall and the prophets cover it with plaster ( Ezekiel 13:10 )-that is to say, when any project or scheme of policy is being promoted they stand by, glozing it over with fine words, flattering its promoters, and uttering profuse assurances of its success. The uselessness of the whole activity of these prophets could not be more vividly described. The white-washing of the wall may hide its defects, but will not prevent its destruction: and when the wall of Jerusalem’s shaky prosperity tumbles down, those who did so little to build and so much to deceive shall be overwhelmed with confusion. "Behold, when the wall is fallen, shall it not be said to them, Where is the plaster which ye plastered?" ( Ezekiel 13:12 ). This will be the beginning of the judgment on false prophets in Israel. The overthrow of their vaticinations, the collapse of the hopes they fostered, and the demolition of the edifice in which they found a refuge shall leave them no more a name or a place in the people of God. "I will stretch out My hand against the prophets that see vanity and divine falsely: in the council of My people they shall not be, and in the register of the house of Israel they shall not be written, and into the land of Israel they shall not come" ( Ezekiel 13:9 ). There was, however, a still more degraded type of prophecy, practised chiefly by women, which must have been exceedingly prevalent in Ezekiel’s time. The prophets spoken of in the first sixteen verses were public functionaries who exerted their evil influence in the arena of polities. The prophetesses spoken of in the latter part of the chapter are private fortune-tellers who practised on the credulity of individuals who consulted them. Their art was evidently magical in the strict sense, a trafficking with the dark powers which were supposed to enter into alliance with men irrespective of moral considerations. Then, as now, such courses were followed for gain, and doubtless proved a lucrative means of livelihood. The "fillets" and "veils" mentioned in Ezekiel 13:18 are either a professional garb worn by the women, or else implements of divination whose precise significance cannot now be ascertained. To the imagination of the prophet they appear as the snares and weapons with which these wretched creatures "hunted souls"; and the extent of the evil which he attacks is indicated by his speaking of the whole people as being entangled in their meshes. Ezekiel naturally bestows special attention on a class of practitioners whose whole influence tended to efface moral landmarks and to deal out to men weal or woe without regard to character. "They slew souls that should not die, and saved alive souls that should not live; they made sad the heart of the righteous, and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from ‘his wicked way and be saved alive" ( Ezekiel 13:22 ). That is to say, while Ezekiel and all true prophets were exhorting men to live resolutely in the light of clear ethical conceptions of providence, the votaries of occult superstitions seduced the ignorant into making private compacts with the powers of darkness in order to secure their personal safety. If the prevalence of sorcery and witchcraft was at all times dangerous to the religion and public order of the state, it was doubly so at a time when, as Ezekiel perceived, everything depended on maintaining the strict rectitude of God in His dealings with individual men. III. Having thus disposed of the external manifestations of false prophecy, Ezekiel proceeds in the fourteenth chapter to deal with the state of mind amongst the people at large which rendered such a condition of things possible. The general import of the passage is clear, although the precise connection of ideas is somewhat difficult to explain. The following observations may suffice to bring out all that is essential to the understanding of the section. The oracle was occasioned by a particular incident, undoubtedly historical-namely, a visit, such as was perhaps now common, from the elders to inquire of the Lord through Ezekiel. As they sit before him it is revealed to the prophet that the minds of these men are preoccupied with idolatry, and therefore it is not fitting that any answer should be given to them by a prophet of Jehovah. Apparently no answer was given by Ezekiel to the particular question they had asked, whatever it may have been. Generalising from the incident, however, he is led to enunciate a principle regulating the intercourse between Jehovah and Israel through the medium of a prophet: "Whatever man of the house of Israel sets his thoughts upon his idols, and puts his guilty stumbling-block before him, and comes to the prophet, I Jehovah will make Myself intelligible to him: that I may take the house of Israel in their own heart, because they are all estranged from Me by their idols" ( Ezekiel 14:4-5 ). It seems clear that one part of the threat here uttered is that the very withholding of the answer will unmask the hypocrisy of men who pretend to be worshippers of Jehovah, but in heart are unfaithful to Him and servants of false gods. The moral principle involved in the prophet’s dictum is clear and of lasting value. It is that for a false heart there can be no fellowship with Jehovah, and therefore no true and sure knowledge of His will. The prophet occupies the point of view of Jehovah, and when consulted by an idolater he finds it impossible to enter into the point of view from which the question is put, and therefore cannot answer it. Ezekiel assumes for the most part that the prophet consulted is a true prophet of Jehovah like himself, who will give no answer to such questions as he has before him. He must, however, allow for the possibility that men of this stamp may receive answers in the name of Jehovah from those reputed to be His true prophets. In that case, says Ezekiel, the prophet is "deceived" by God; he is allowed to give a response which is not a true response at all, but only confirms the people in their delusions and unbelief. But this deception does not take place until the prophet has incurred the guilt of deceiving himself in the first instance. It is his fault that he has not perceived the bent of his questioners’ minds, that he has accommodated himself to their ways of thought, has consented to occupy their standpoint in order to be able to say something coinciding with the drift of their wishes. Prophet and inquirers are involved in a common guilt and share a common fate, both being sentenced to exclusion from the commonwealth of Israel. The purification of the institution of prophecy necessarily appeared to Ezekiel as an indispensable feature in the restoration of the theocracy. The ideal of Israel’s relation to Jehovah is "that they may be My people, and that I may be their God" ( Ezekiel 14:11 ). That implies that Jehovah shall be the source of infallible guidance in all things needful for the religious life of the individual and the guidance of the state. But it was impossible for Jehovah to be to Israel all that a God should be, so long as the regular channels of communication between Him and the nation were choked by false conceptions in the minds of the people and false men in the position of prophets. Hence the constitution of a new Israel demands such special judgments on false prophecy and the false use of true prophecy as have been denounced in these chapters. When these judgments have been executed, the ideal will have become possible which is described in the words of another prophet: "Thine eyes shall see thy teachers: and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it." { Isaiah 30:20-21 } The Expositor's Bible Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

Them that prophesy out of their own hearts. Ezekiel 13:1-3 The false prophet Bishop S. Wilberforce. To be a false prophet seems to us, indeed, an enormity. To have the great gift and trust of prophecy, and then to misuse it; to be admitted, if we may so speak, of God's council, and then to sink that heavenly teaching in earthly and sensual thoughts, — this seems so high a measure of guilt, that we wonder not at the "woe" pronounced against it. Nay, as we read, we set our "amen" to it, little thinking that in so doing we may be, in truth, sealing our own condemnation. We see not that this very sin is that which doth most constantly beset us also; that many a ministry which seems to man's eye without reproach is indeed stained with the self-same guilt as that wherewith these prophets were defiled; that, in spite of its fair outline, the "woe" of the Almighty is gone forth against it. If we examine the testimonies against these false prophets which abound throughout the Books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, we shall find that God does not charge them with altering His message wilfully and of set purpose to deceive. The charges are rather, that they are themselves deceived ( Jeremiah 5:13 ; Jeremiah 10:9 ; Jeremiah 14:14 ; Jeremiah 23:16 ; Lamentations 2:14 ; Ezekiel 13:3, 7, 9 ). It was not, apparently, that the false prophet knowingly altered the message he had received, but that for some cause or other there was this peril incident to his office, that he might be deceived and become a deceiver in some sense unconsciously; and then, if we look closer, we shall see that various causes are given for the fearful fall of the false prophet, and that they are all of one complexion — that they are what we call moral causes. Uncleanness of life, covetousness, softness of spirit, luxury, fondness for the pleasures of this life, these and many such like moral faults are expressly mentioned as the causes of this spirit of error and lies which filled these men and brought on them God's fearful "woe." The prophets prophesied lies, because they "followed their own spirit, and had seen nothing." And now, if from the case of false prophets we turn to that of those who were faithful, we shall be brought to the same conclusion: we shall see, that is, that the distinction between them and the prophets of lies consisted not in their exclusive possession of those supernatural illapses of knowledge, to which we are apt to look, as making all the difference between one and another, but in the use which, from their spiritual and moral condition, they were able to make of these gifts. Look at the prophet who never "prophesied good" of the wicked king, but always "evil"; and see whether it was not in that noble gift of venturing all for the truth of God, wherein in very deed he differed from the earthly-minded sycophants, who made horns of iron, and prophesied, that as with them the Syrians should be pushed unto entire destruction. Or take, as a sufficient proof, the case of the prophet Jeremiah. To him was opened, by a special revelation, the speedy coming of God's judgments upon Judah, which nothing but the absolute submission of Jerusalem to the King of Babylon could turn aside. So far he learned by revelation; but having learned thus much, mark his after history; see the constantly recurring moral temptation to tamper with this truth, to which he was subjected: the violence of the princes — the rage of the people — the feebleness of the king — their private interviews — the bribes offered to buy off his faithfulness — the miry dungeon of Malchiah; each of these was a temptation to lower down his message; to utter it less boldly, less frequently; less simply — to suppress it, to alter it. But against them all he stood firm, and why? Because a deep and abiding sense of God's greatness and truth and awfulness lay beneath all other things, as the very foundation of his mind; and this kept him ever firm and constant. In an utterly unfaithful age and nation, remaining faithful when well-nigh everyone around him failed, he preserved untainted, amidst the crowd of lying seers, the truth of God's anointed prophet. So that here we are brought to the same point: the blindness of the false prophet was the fruit of failing in his moral probation; the ghostly insight of the true prophet was kept quick and piercing, by his faithful cleaving to God amidst the ordinary temptations of life. And if this be so, surely this is exactly our condition, as far as concerns the ministry of the Word; and these woes against deceived prophets stand written on high, in their characters of fire, to warn us upon our ordinary way. For we also have our message: that which was given to the old prophets by special revelation we have plainly written for us in the page of Holy Scripture. Nor can we doubt that, if this message be delivered faithfully and wisely, it will produce an evident result in awakening sinners and building up the saints. We may see, moreover, that in our case the cause of failure is, in fact, the same as in the prophets of old. First, our own perceptions become obscured. For it is only by the teaching of the Holy Spirit that we can really enter into the deep mysteries of redemption. Impurity cannot lay hold upon purity. There are many doors of holy teaching, which open only to the key of love; and there is in love a marvellous power of understanding, a wonderful forecasting of the future; for love is a great reader of secrets. Even in earthly things, which are but a shadow of the true, we may see this. What an interpreter of hidden meanings is a loving spirit! how quick and piercing is it in reaching to the inner wishes, feeling, and intentions of another! And so doubtless it is where the love of God dwells in an earthly heart. The man is free, as it were, of the counsels of God. He reaches on to great things at unawares. In doing common duties, as they seem to him, he is sowing good seed for a distant day; he is reaching out far beyond the present, anticipating God's future doings. Nor, secondly, can our own views of God's truth become thus obscured without their impairing in an equal degree our power of conveying the message to others. First, this state of heart must destroy the reality of our teaching. We shall prophesy a lie; for we shall prophesy of truth itself as if it were a lie. There is nothing that our people feel more readily than this unreal declaration of God's message. There is no close work with the heart or the life; but all is exhausted in mere form, or else in general appeals to the feelings, or in yet more fruitless addresses to the understanding, as the case may be. What., then, is this but to prophesy a lie? And this is not all. There can be little of a true loving earnestness in such ministry. There may be an apparent zeal as to forms, or as to preaching, and its other more external parts; but there can be little true sympathy with the wants and sufferings of man's heart, because there is little knowledge of them. There can be little of that deep earnest casting forth of the inmost spirit to meet another's wants, which oftentimes makes silent sympathy in one man far more expressive than a multitude of words in another; and which, as by some heavenly influence, soothes and opens and wins the sufferer's heart. I may not detain you to trace out all the characters of that earnest seeking after God's truth to which we are bound; its faintest sketch may supply us with much ground for profitable thought. First, then, if we would attain to it, we must live in the habitual and devotional study of God's Word. The great importance of this habit is not so much that we may understand obscure passages, still less that we may be discoverers of new truths, as that our whole tone of thinking and feeling may be attuned to things Divine. But then, to this we must add an humble use of every means that God has given us for understanding His Word rightly. By the ordinances of the Church; the testimony of succeeding generations; the judgment of humble and holy men; the witness borne to various truths by all the saints, living and departed, reformers, fathers, and antiquity; by each of these in their place, we humbly hope that God may teach us better how to understand His Word. Secondly, we must watch earnestly for the leading of the Spirit of the Lord. We must believe that this gift is in the Church, and seek to use it lawfully; we must remember how the Spirit of God does teach us, not by conveying to our minds direct propositions, but by clearing off those moral clouds which would dim all our perceptions of truth; by teaching our hearts, by giving us reality, earnestness, love, and a bold humility, — those mighty masters of the secret things of God. We shall therefore cooperate with Him by watching diligently our own hearts; by guarding them against the beginnings of worldliness; by seeking after a deeper humility of spirit; knowing that pride above all things breaks and distorts the images of heavenly truth which are cast forth upon our minds; that pride in the heart of the learner makes all teaching vain; that humility can learn great lessons from any teacher. And lastly, as the bond which is to hold together all these various elements, we must, if we would be faithful prophets, seek after eminent holiness of life. This will give us an insight into God's truth in its reality; this will open to us our own hearts, and so the hearts of our brethren; this will set us in the way of those blessed breathings of the Holy Spirit which fall ever upon the still waters of holiness, and waft on most noiselessly those who always haunt them into the secrets of the Lord. This will enable us to live ever with Him even in this world of shadows. ( Bishop S. Wilberforce. ) False prophesying J. Parker, D. D. 1. What is the specific charge made against false prophets? That they speak out of their own hearts, and that they follow their own spirit. How prone are all men to do this! 2. Every man now prophesies out of himself. Let us beware how we degrade a right into a perversion of liberty and a mischievous use of independence. There is a right of private judgment, there is an individuality of conscience: but no judgment is complete that does not measure itself with other judgments, and no conscience is complete that is not in touch with other consciences; for the last conscience is the result and expression of spiritual chemistry, combination, intermixture, divinely conducted. There may come a time when personal testimony must be delivered with burning emphasis, and when a man is compelled to enclose himself within a solitary altar; all these concessions do not interfere with the central and dominant truth that no prophecy is of private interpretation, and that all secret prayer needs to be brought out into the open air of the Church, that there it may bloom in its completest beauty. 3. False prophets excite false hopes: what other could they do? "They have made others to hope that they would confirm the Word." A liar is very careful to maintain some foothold upon the confidence of society. He who is all false himself can only live upon the trustfulness of others. So, then, the false prophet is the creator of false hopes; and if there be counterfeit coin makers in our neighbourhood, it would not be an unwise thing to put out our coin upon the table and look at it very carefully; and as there are false prophets who have excited false hopes, it would not be unwise to take our hopes one by one, and conduct upon each of them an unsparing analysis, saying, What is it? what is its reason? what is its purpose? what is its value? what is its origin? how is it supported by evidence? how is it ennobled by sacrifice? Any hope that will not accept the test of sacrifice is a false hope. 4. False prophets had, however, some little ground to work upon: they mistook the imaginary for the real: "Have ye not seen a vain vision?" That is the difficulty. If there was absolutely nothing, we should have a clear course; but we have lying definitions, we have occasional dreams, and peculiar impressions; and people who resent the idea of accepting a theology made by the Church adopt an astrology or a theology of their own, founded upon cobwebs, built upon mist, and pointing to nothing. Let us pray God to cleanse our vision, lest, seeing men as trees walking, or trees as men walking, we confound the reality of things; and above all, let us say to one another, Brother, help me, and I will help some weaker man, Let us have our strength common. 5. What course does the Lord pursue against such falsity? "I am against you, saith the Lord God." We know, then, exactly what strength we have to encounter. It is only omnipotence. We have sometimes wondered how it is we do not succeed. There need not be any wonder about it; for our failure arises from one of two causes: either, first, that God is against us, in the sense of judging us to be false; or God is trying us to develop our strength. Let us adopt the second conclusion where we can, for it will cheer us and help us on many a weary day. 6. What further course will the Lord take against these false prophets? He will destroy them. They build a wall; He sends hail down upon it, and brings the wall all to pieces. We need not go to the Prophet Ezekiel to know if this is true. What walls we have built! What strength we were going to have! We had already drawn out a hundred programmes, every one of which ended in pounds, shillings, and pence; and a hundred more, ending in honour, fame, influence; and another hundred, ending in herds and flocks, and abundance of family connections and great peace, and long days: and whilst we were filling our mouth with the wind the Lord touched us, and we fell down as dead men. If the Lord, then, is so set against falsehood, what will He do for us? He will speak the truth, He will send angels of truth, messengers of mercy and love. Beware lest we have all our truth on paper, in propositions, innumerable and well detailed dogmas: we must first have it in our souls, hearts, lives; we must be prepared to live for it and to die for it, and then it will grow, accumulate, multiply; and we shall begin to see, with the ever excellent because ever modest philosopher, Sir Isaac Newton, that we have only gathered a few shells on the shore, while the great ocean of truth lies all undiscovered before us. Such modesty well becomes men who were born yesterday and may be forgotten tomorrow. ( J. Parker, D. D. ) Thy prophets are like the foxes in the desert. Ezekiel 13:4 False prophets like foxes W. Reading, M. A. 1. These creatures are lovers of grapes, as we know by a common proverb; and consequently they did much damage in such countries as Judea, which abounded with vineyards, as is noted in Song of Solomon 2:15 , not only by devouring the grapes but also by making holes in the walls and fences, whereby they laid open the vineyards to other ravenous beasts as well as to themselves. Just so did the false prophets to the cities of Judah: they did not only beguile people of their substance, by the character which they assumed, and the figure which they made among them; but by their false doctrines and subversions of the genuine will and Word of God they broke down the walls and fences from about them; I mean that blessing and protection of the Almighty which was annexed to the obedience of His own laws. 2. In another respect did these prophets resemble the foxes in the deserts, that they could make breaches, but had not the faculty of stopping them up again. They did not call the people to repentance; or if they did, it was but such a superficial fast as we read of ( Jeremiah 36 ), at which they read his prophecy, and then cut it in pieces and threw it into the fire. Their making up of their breaches this way was but like the labour of unfaithful builders; one laid the stones in the wall, and others daubed it with untempered mortar. 3. These false prophets resembled foxes in their fraudulent practices. By crafty speeches and cunningly devised fables they misled the hearts of the simple. They studied how to suit their discourses to the various tempers of the people whom they conversed with; to prophesy smooth things to the stout-hearted, and terrible things to the timorous, that they might keep them all in the way which they would have them to walk in. 4. These false prophets had another property of foxes, which was a prowling ravenous appetite. When they came out of their colleges into the vineyard, they resolved that the making of their fortune, the arriving at a plentiful condition, a goodly heritage, should be the first and greatest of all their cares. So little were they concerned for the welfare of the people over whom they pretended to be guardians and spiritual watchmen, that they would sell their souls, as God complains here, for handfuls of barley and morsels of bread. 5. As foxes are of the number of unclean beasts, so these prophets were men of corrupt minds and loose morals. How prone they were to prevaricate with God, and seduce the people, to counterfeit a Divine mission, to run when they were not sent, to prophesy out of their own heart without a revelation, to proclaim their visions of peace when there was no peace, is abundantly set forth in this chapter. ( W. Reading, M. A. ) False prophets like foxes A. B. Davidson, D. D. The prophets are like foxes: ruins are congenial to them; a condition of decay is their proper sphere; there they can burrow as their instincts prompt them. The main idea, however, is that their operations only increase the devastation, and Undermine and bring down anything that may yet be standing. In a declining and disastrous time the minds of men are excited and feed on the wildest schemes; and, feeling themselves helpless, they readily turn to those who pretend to speak to them in God's name. And it only adds to their ruin when those to whom they turn have no higher wisdom than themselves. ( A. B. Davidson, D. D. ) One built up a wall, and lo, others daubed it with untempered mortar. Ezekiel 13:10-12 The wall daubed with untempered mortar I. THE TEXT SPEAKS OF A WALL. Men look about them to discover some sort of wall or other behind which to shelter from conscience and Divine threatening. I suppose this is because conscience is not quite dead in any man. In some men it has been so drugged and chloroformed that it never seems to act with anything like vigour, and when it speaks it is only with a still small voice, and not at all with the thunder which its voice ought to have to the mind of men; yet that little relic of conscience, which with a microscope you can detect in all men, needs to be pacified, and men are glad if by any lie, however barefaced, they can create an excuse by which they may go on quietly in their sins. 1. Perhaps the greatest wall behind which men shelter themselves is that of utter indifference to anything like Divine truth. Some silly dancer at the opera, some new invention, some novel trick of legerdemain, some fresh anything or nothing, and the world is all agog; but as to things which will outlast sun and moon, and stand fast when yon blue heaven, like a scroll, has been rolled up and put away — these all-important things our wiseacres think but trifles, and they continue trampling God's eternal truth beneath their feet, as swine do trample pearls, and rushing madly after the bubbles of this world, as though they were all that men were made to hunt after. 2. Numbers, however, are not quite so stupid, so besotted, so blind, so brutalised as to put up with this. Like a crying child, their conscience will be heard. Like a horse leech, it ever cries "Give, give," and will not be content. Who comes next? Who is the anointed one of Satan to quiet this spirit? Who will yield a quietus to a mind alarmed? See the wall of ceremonies behind which many rest so contentedly. 3. You may be building another wall, namely, that of self-righteousness. How many have been piling up their wall, and gathering their wood, their hay, their stubble, with which to erect a defence to screen themselves from God by their own doings? II. WHENEVER A MAN TRIES TO BUILD A WALL BEHIND WHICH TO SHELTER, HE ALWAYS FINDS A VOLUNTEER BAND OF READY ASSISTANTS. 1. For instance, a man who is easy in his pleasures, how many will help him to continue at his ease! "He is right," says one; "You are a good fellow," says another; and they both try to keep him in countenance by their company. 2. Another company of scoffers will loudly boast themselves, and cry, "Yes, you are all right in continuing in neglect of God and of Divine truth, because the saints are no better than they should be. I remember what So-and-so did once — he was a deacon; and I know the inconsistencies of Mr. Zealous, and he is one of the parsons." 3. A numerous body of daubers gather at the sign of the "Sneerer," in Atheist Street; and with their doubts, or their supposed doubts, of inspiration and biblical authenticity, are ready to daub and plaster any amount of wall an inch thick. 4. If the wall be built of ceremonies, how many are busy daubing that! What multitudes of books are streaming from the press, books of ability, too, all going to show that salvation is infallibly connected with a mechanical process, conducted by specified officials, and not a spiritual work independent of all outward performances! III. THE WORD OF GOD DECLARES THAT THIS WALL WILL NOT STAND. The wall to which Ezekiel alludes is one of the cob walls in the East, daubed with bad mortar, which had not been well tempered, that is to say, not well mixed with the straw which they use in place of the hair which we use in England; when the rain comes, it softens the whole structure of such a wall, melts it, and washes it quite away. Such a deluge as that is coming ere long to try and test every human hope. 1. It comes to some men when they enter upon times of spiritual trial. 2. But if the test come not thus it will usually come at death. 3. And if death does not do it — for some men die like lambs, and like sheep are they laid in the grave; but the worm shall feed upon them — if death does not do it, the judgment shall. IV. IF WE SHALL BE FOUND LOST AT THE LAST, IT WILL BE AN EVERLASTING REPROACH TO US THAT WE ONCE ACCEPTED THE FALSE HELPS OF OUR FRIENDS. "Where is the daubing wherewith ye have daubed it?" That voice may proceed from many lips. 1. It may come from the lips of Jesus. "I said unto you, 'Come unto Me and live,' but you would not come; you refused the refuge which I presented to you, and you chose your own works, and rested in ceremonies of your own devising, and now where is the daubing wherewith ye have daubed it?" 2. I could imagine such a voice as that coming from a faithful minister, or other Christian labourer, who may have honestly pointed out to you the one and only way of salvation. 3. And there shall come another voice, with quite another tone-a hoarse and horrible voice — a voice full of malice and grim laughter, which shall say, "Where is the daubing wherewith ye have daubed it?" You shall understand it to be the voice of him who once deceived you — the fallen spirit, the devil. 4. There shall be heard amidst that thick darkness and horrid gloom, that never shall be broken by a ray of light, another voice which once you knew. Perhaps the husband shall hear the voice of the wife, who shall say, "Ah! where is the daubing wherewith ye have daubed it? You would not let me go to the house of God; you laughed me out of my religion. I was once a young woman unmarried, who cared for the things of God in some respects; you courted me and enticed me away from my father's God, and then you laughed me out of my prayers and Sabbath worship; you have laughed me into hell, but you cannot laugh me out of it again." 5. And then, last of all, your own conscience, from which you never can escape, which is, perhaps, the worm that never dies, and the flame which kindles the fire of remorse that never shall be quenched, your conscience will say to you, "Where is the daubing wherewith you have daubed it?" ( C. H. Spurgeon . ) Prophets feeble and yielding A. B. Davidson, D. D. The figure incisively describes the futile projects of the people and the feeble flattery and approval of the prophets. When a weak man cannot originate anything himself, he acquires a certain credit (at least in his own eyes) by strong approval of the schemes of others, saying, "Right! I give it my cordial approval, and, indeed, would have suggested it." What made the prophets whitewash the wall which the people built was partly the feeling that from the place they occupied they must do something, and maintain their credit as leaders even when being led; and partly, perhaps, that, having no higher wisdom than the mass, they quite honestly approved their policy. Being sharers with them in the spirit of the time, they readily acquiesced in their enterprises. ( A. B. Davidson, D. D. ) False hopes D. Moore, M. A. I. WHAT ARE THE FOUNDATIONS OF THIS FABRIC? 1. It is built upon falsehood. Observe, it is here imputed to these false prophets that they led the people to suppose that their state by nature was not one of enmity with God, — that, in fact, they were at peace with Him. Now, this falsehood is manifest. We are not at peace by nature. We all know that God has a strife with man, a righteous ground of controversy with every man born into the world. Our first conscious thoughts are those of disaffection and dislike to holiness; and our first voluntary actions are to take up arms against God. We, then, are not at peace, but at enmity with God. How was this breach to be made up? Usually, a vanquished foe expects to buy peace at a large price; but we had nothing to pay. It remained, therefore, that the benignant Being with whom we had been carrying on this fruitless and ungrateful warfare should Himself originate a scheme of reconciliation. We know that Christ is our peace, and our only peace. He brings peace, He preaches peace, He bestows peace. "To as many as received Him, gave He power to become the sons of God." "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God." This is the foundation, and other can no man lay. He who shall dare to build on any other shall see the fabric perish before the overflowing shower, and the stormy wind shall rend it. 2. It is not laid deeply enough. In the fourteenth verse it is said, with regard to this foundation, "The foundation thereof shall be discovered," laid bare, open to the sight of the beholder. The image is commonly used in Scripture to denote that which is superficial and unsound. Everything that is to be firm strikes deeply into the ground. Job speaks of having "the root of the matter" in himself; and the stony ground, hearer, fell, we are told, because there was in him no depth of earth. What is the kind of foundation here spoken of? Doubtless, we must take it as applying here to a religion which rests upon slight convictions of sin, — little sense of its heinousness and guilt. The Spirit convinces of sin, to lead to Him that shall take all sin away. The Spirit of God opens no wounds, except with a view the more effectually and kindly to bind them up. 3. Another element of this unstable foundation is presumption, an unwarrantable appropriation of the promises; as if the benefit of an amnesty could be extended to those who were still in an attitude of rebellion; as if the promises of salvation could still be held out to those who continued in unrepented sin. This is strongly marked in the latter part of the twenty-second verse. It may be a grievous error in a teacher, according to the first part of that verse, to make the hearts of the righteous sad, whom God hath not made sad; but surely it is a much more grievous error to hold out the promise of life to those to whom, as yet, God has not given peace. Our Lord must be our example here. II. WHAT ARE THE WALLS OF THIS FABRIC? In other words, by what supports and excuses do men keep this unsound and unscriptural hope together? "One built up a wall, and others daubed it with untempered mortar." The meaning of the prophet's allusion will be best explained by a reference to Jewish domestic architecture. Although hewn stones were employed for the purpose of very large buildings, for small houses a tile was commonly used, formed of white clay and baked in the sun. These tiles were cemented together by mortar, which, as among ourselves, was made to acquire a certain adhesive property by means of straw and chaff. Travellers tell us that whole villages are formed of houses built with this white clay or tile, and they tell us, further, that after rain the filth occasioned by the dissolving of the cement will make the ways in front of the houses perfectly impassable; whilst, if the mortar which has been used has been very badly tempered, that is, very imperfectly mixed with the straw or the chaff, it is no uncommon thing to see the house fall down entirely, under the violence or dissolving action of the rain, the very effect which we see alluded to in the text. What a picture have we here of the refuges which worldly men make for themselves against that day, when judgment shall be laid to the line and righteousness to the plummet! Oh, how many of these slight walls are people running up every day! There is the wall of evil example, by which a man fortifies himself in his low standard of personal and practical godliness by what he sees in someone around him. There is the wall of pretended necessity; the urgent claims of daily life making it, as he alleges, impossible for him to attend to the cares of his family and the interests of his soul. There is the wall of constitutional impediment, the pretence that something in our peculiar temperament and constitution or circumstances makes it so difficult for us to attend to the things of our salvation. There is the wall of perverted doctrine, where men, waiting for some impulse from above, knowing that Divine grace must begin the work, say, they can do nothing themselves, they must wait till God by His Spirit changes their hearts. And then there is the wall of good intentions, the purpose of serving God, but not now, the miserable promise that we will give to God the remnant of our days, that He shall have the reversion of our "convenient season." Oh, how many of these flimsy fabrics will fall, and do fall daily, before the first breath of the Divine displeasure. But observe, further, it is said that when one built the wall, another daubed it with untempered mortar. This seems to intimate to us that foolish and unconverted men are in the habit of encouraging each other in their foolish hopes: justifying one another in their vain excuses; each confirming the reasonableness of the other's pretences, and then going away confirmed and strengthened in his own. III. THESE FALSE HOPES SHALL BE THROWN DOWN. This false builder shall wake and see the crumbling of his own wretched wall; this mere dauber shall see the melting and dissolving of his own untempered mortar, that God alone may be exalted in that day, and that every unscriptural and unauthorised, unsanctioned hope may perish. And oh, will not the weakness and instability of this wall appear before this hurricane of Divine indignation comes upon us? When the silver cord is loosed, and the golden bowl is broken; when the pitcher is broken at the fountain, shall we not then perceive that we have been building upon a treacherous foundation? But then, if we feel it in that day, what shall we feel in that remoter time, when the storm of the Divine indignation shall come upon the whole world? ( D. Moore, M. A. ) The false prophet H. E. Lewis. The false prophets are much in evidence up to the point of the fall of Jerusalem. Ezekiel accuses them of the crime of the hireling shepherd: they used the flock to make wages, and so became the type for all time of those who make "The symbols of atoning grace An office key."The false prophet gained favour with the military party in the nation, by his telling advocacy of a vast and well-prepared army and of brilliant foreign alliances, he won favour with the clerical party by not demanding too much virtue, either from the individual or from the State. As a class they had a ready apology for every shifting policy. True, the apology, although always ready, was only an apology — or, to use the prophet's own figure, it was only a daubing of the ill-built wall with untempered mortar ( Ezekiel 13:8-16 ) — "that is to say, when any project or scheme of policy is being promoted, they stand by glozing it over with fine words, flattering it

13:1-9 Where God gives a warrant to do any thing, he gives wisdom. What they delivered was not what they had seen or heard, as that is which the ministers of Christ deliver. They were not praying prophets, had no intercourse with Heaven; they contrived how to please people, not how to do them good; they stood not against sin. They flattered people into vain hopes. Such widen the breach, by causing men to think themselves deserving of eternal life, when the wrath of God abides upon them. 13:10-16 One false prophet built the wall, set up the notion that Jerusalem should be victorious, and made himself acceptable by it. Others made the matter yet more plausible and promising; they daubed the wall which the first had built; but they would, ere long, be undeceived when their work was beaten down by the storm of God's just wrath; when the Chaldean army desolated the land. Hopes of peace and happiness, not warranted by the word of God, will cheat men; like a wall well daubed, but ill built. 13:17-23 It is ill with those who had rather hear pleasing lies than unpleasing truths. The false prophetesses tried to make people secure, signified by laying them at ease, and to make them proud, signified by the finery laid on their heads. They shall be confounded in their attempts, and God's people shall be delivered out of their hands. It behoves Christians to keep close to the word of God, and in every thing to seek the teaching of the Holy Spirit. Let us so trust the promises of God as to keep his commandments.