Ezekiel 13:16

To wit, the prophets of Israel which prophesy concerning Jerusalem, and which see visions of peace for her, and there is no peace, saith the Lord GOD. THE PROPHETS ... WHICH PROPHESY CONCERNING JERUSALEM AND ... SEE VISIONS OF PEACE FOR HER, AND THERE IS THE PROPHETS ... WHICH PROPHESY CONCERNING JERUSALEM AND ... SEE VISIONS OF PEACE FOR HER, AND THERE IS NO PEACE. With all their seeing, "visions of peace for her," they cannot ensure "peace" or safety to themselves....

He now concludes this discourse, and shows what he had hitherto intended by a building badly cemented, by using sand without lime. _The prophets of Israel prophesied concerning Jerusalem_. Here he does not mean false prophets, with whom Jeremiah was continually contending, but those who in exile still hardened the wretched. While they thought to make use of the occasion, and so to humble the people who had been so grievously wounded by the hand of God, they stirred them up to pride, as we have formerly seen. Our Prophet was obliged to strive with them for the comfort of his exiles, for he was peculiarly sent to the captives, as we have said, although the advantage of his prophecies also reached Jerusalem. _The prophets_, those _of Israel_, that is, the ten tribes dispersed in different directions, _prophesied concerning Jerusalem_. Why then did they not rather predict a happy result? For...

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....

EXPOSITION EZEKIEL 13:1 Another interval follows, and then a fresh and fuller burst of inspiration, manifestly in close connection with Ezekiel 12:21, and to be read in combination with Jeremiah 23:1; which, as Jeremiah was in communication with the exiles (Jeremiah 29:1), Ezekiel may probably have seen. There were false prophets and prophetesses among the exiles as well as in Jerusalem, and an utterance is now found for his long pent up indignation. EZEKIEL 13:2,...

[TO WIT], THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL, WHICH PROPHESY CONCERNING JERUSALEM,.... This explains who are meant by those that daubed with untempered mortar: AND WHICH SEE VISIONS OF PEACE FOR HER; not in reality, but in pretence; they boasted that they had visions and revelations from the Lord, and assured the people they should enjoy great peace and prosperity; but these, as they are before called, were vain visions and lying divinations: there seems to be in this an allusion to the name of Jerusalem, which, according to some, signifies, "they shall see peace:'' AND [THERE IS] NO PEACE, SAITH THE LORD GOD; not to the wicked; nor to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, who listened to the false prophets; nor to the false prophets themselves....

Ezekiel 13:1. And now the Lord speaks through Ezekiel about the false prophets in the midst of His people. They prophesied out of their own hearts; or as it might be rendered, “Who prophesy from their own mind without having seen.” Such they were and such are the false teachers of this present age 2 Peter 2:1. Of such our Lord warned: “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” Matthew 7:15. Every man who prophesies out of his own heart, who utters his own mind, whose preaching and teaching is not according to the oracles of God, is a false prophet, a blind leader of the blind. Like false prophets in Israel the false teachers in Christendom are the cause of the spiritua

Their doom is therefore sealed. They too will be confounded in the confusion which they have helped to create. They shall be swept off the land of Israel, and their names shall not appear on the registry of the citizens of the restored community, because they said It is well, when it was anything but well. In another picture suggested by the siege, Ezekiel very graphically describes their shallow, criminal methods. Instead of helping to repair the shattered wall of the state, they whitewash it, careless of the fact that the whitewashing of the wall may hide its defects, but will not prevent its destruction (Ex. B, p. 121). But one day he is thinking of the siege and fall of the city the awful storm will come, deluge, and hailstones, and hurl the fair but shoddy wall so violently to the ground that the very foundations will be laid bare. Then when the wall and its silly builders, the stat...

VISIONS. a vision. PEACE. Reference to meaning of the word Jerusalem....

to wit, _the prophets_ This construction puts "the prophets" in apposition with the last words of Ezekiel 13:15 "they that daubed it." The words may be taken as an address: Ye prophets of Israel &c....

III. TWO SCATHING ORACLES DELIVERED 13:1-23 In chapter 13 Ezekiel directs his attack against those who spawned the blasphemous proverbs which he has just refuted in Ezekiel 12:21-28. Ezekiel denounces these prophet-types for undermining the stability of the nation at a time when it needed to be built up. He speaks first of the condemnation of the prophets (Ezekiel 13:1-16), and then of the prophetesses (Ezekiel 13:17-23). In order to grasp the magnitude of the problem faced by the faithful pro-claimer of God's word in this period, Jeremiah 29 should be read in connection with these denunciations....