Ezekiel 13:4

O Israel, thy prophets are like the foxes in the deserts. O ISRAEL, THY PROPHETS ARE LIKE THE FOXES - which cunningly "spoil the vines" (), Israel being the vineyard (Psalms 80:8; Isaiah 5:1; ; ): their duty was to have guarded it from being spoiled, whereas they themselves spoiled it by corruptions. IN THE DESERTS - where there is nothing to eat; whence the foxes become so ravenous and crafty in their devices to get food. So the prophets wander in Israel, a moral desert, unrestrained, greedy of gain, which they get by c...

Hence Ezekiel exposes the snares of the false prophets. The ten tribes had been dispersed, just as if a field or a vineyard had been removed from a habitable neighborhood into desert regions, and foxes held their sway there instead. For they have many hiding-places; they insinuate themselves through hedges and all openings, and so break into the vineyard or field, and lay waste its fruits. Such, as I have said, was the condition of the people from the time of its dispersion. While the Israelites dwelt at home, they were in some way retained within their duty, as if fortified by certain ramparts. At Jerusalem, too, the high Priest presided over spiritual trials, that no impious doctrine should creep in: but now, since the people were so dispersed, greater license was given to the false prophets to corrupt the people, since the miserable exiles were exposed to these foxes; for they were li...

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....

Verse Ezekiel 13:4. _THY PROPHETS ARE LIKE THE FOXES IN THE DESERTS._] The cunning of the _fox_ in obtaining his prey has been long proverbial. These false prophets are represented as the foxes who, having got their prey by great subtlety, run to the desert to hide both themselves and it. So the false prophets, when the event did not answer to their prediction, _got out of the way_, that they might not be overwhelmed with the reproaches and indignation of the people....

IN THE DESERTS - Foxes find a home among ruins etc. Lamentations 5:18. So the prophets find their profit in the ruin of their country....

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,...

O ISRAEL, THY PROPHETS ARE LIKE THE FOXES OF THE DESERTS. The false prophets, as the Targum; these are called Israel's prophets, because received, embraced, and encouraged by them; not the Lord's, for they were not sent by him, nor had any messages from him; and such are comparable to foxes, for their craftiness and cunning, and lying in wait to deceive, as these seduced the Lord's people, Ezekiel 13:10; and such are false teachers, who walk in craftiness, and handle the word of God deceitfully, and are deceitful workers; and to foxes in the deserts, which are hungry and ravenous, and make a prey of whatsoever comes within their reach, as these prophets did of the people, Ezekiel 13:19. Kimchi interprets "deserts" of breaches and ruinous places in the walls of a vineyard, where the foxes li

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

EZEKIEL 13. DENUNCIATION OF THE FALSE PROPHETS (EZEKIEL 13:1) AND PROPHETESSES (EZEKIEL 13:17). Besides the delay of the doom which Ezekiel threatened, the people were deluded by the welcome and reassuring promises of the false prophets, of whose temper and methods this chapter draws a very living picture. EZEKIEL 13:1. The false prophets were jingoes, with no real inspiration, courage, or insight into the moral quality of the political situation. Some of them were sincere and hoped for the confirmation of their message, but all of them were shallow. They could repeat the formulæ of the true prophet, and preface their message with a Thus saith Yahweh, but they were not real messengers of His at all. I

FOXES. jackals. DESERTS. ruins....