What does Ezechiel Chapter 14 say, and which statements belong to its speaker?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

Idolatrous inquiry receives judgment. Four conditional calamities distinguish individual deliverance. Survivors’ ways comfort observers.

Chapter breakdown

Ezechiel 14 addresses Israel's ancients who come to inquire while placing idols in their hearts and the stumbling block of iniquity before their faces. The Lord answers according to their many uncleannesses and calls Israel to turn from idols and abominations. Israelites and proselytes who separate themselves from him yet inquire receive his answer; his face against them makes them an example and proverb and cuts them off from his people. The deceived prophet is also judged. The edition separately explains a false prophet's corrupt inclinations, withdrawal of divine light, abandonment and disappointment of predictions by contrary events. Inquirer and prophet bear their iniquity so Israel will cease straying and become his people.

Four conditional judgments follow: famine, evil beasts, sword and pestilence. Noe, Daniel and Job would deliver their own souls by justice, but not sons or daughters in these cases. These examples are not a chronological series or a universal denial that anyone can benefit from another's merits.

Even when the four judgments come upon Jerusalem, a surviving remnant brings away sons and daughters. Those who see their ways and doings will be comforted concerning Jerusalem's afflictions and know that the Lord did not act without cause. The text does not identify all survivors as young men and maidens or expressly characterize their observed conduct as depraved.

The story inside

Opening: Idolatrous inquiry receives judgment. Development: Four conditional calamities distinguish individual deliverance. Conclusion: Survivors’ ways comfort observers.

Lessons worth keeping

1
Idolatrous inquiry receives judgment.
2
Four conditional calamities distinguish individual deliverance.
3
Survivors’ ways comfort observers.

Test your recall

Which images and requests does the speaker use, and what does the chapter leave unresolved?

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 92466–92477
14:3. Son of man, these men have placed their uncleannesses in their hearts, and have set up before their face the stumblingblock of their iniquity: and shall I answer when they inquire of me? Uncleanness.... That is, their filthy idols, upon which they have set their hearts: and which are a stumblingblock to their souls. 14:4. Therefore speak to them, and say to them: Thus saith the Lord God: Man, man of the house of Israel that shall place his uncleannesses in his heart, and set up the stumblingblock of his iniquity before his face, and shall come to the prophet inquiring of me by him: I the Lord will answer him according to the multitude of his uncleannesses:
Lines 92498–92512
14:9. And when the prophet shall err, and speak a word: I the Lord have deceived that prophet: and I will stretch forth my hand upon him, and will cut him off from the midst of my people Israel. The prophet shall err, etc.... He speaks of false prophets, answering out of their own heads and according to their own corrupt inclinations.—Ibid. I have deceived that prophet.... God Almighty deceives false prophets, partly by withdrawing his light from them; and abandoning them to their own corrupt inclinations, which push them on to prophesy such things as are agreeable to those who consult them: and partly by disappointing them, and causing all thing to happen contrary to what they have said. 14:10. And they shall bear their iniquity: according to the iniquity of him that inquireth, so shall the iniquity of the prophet be.
Lines 92520–92535
14:13. Son of man, when a land shall sin against me, so as to transgress grievously, I will stretch forth my hand upon it, and will break the staff of the bread thereof: and I will send famine upon it, and will destroy man and beast out of it. 14:14. And if these three men, Noe, Daniel, and Job, shall be in it: they shall deliver their own souls by their justice, saith the Lord of hosts. 14:15. And if I shall bring mischievous beasts also upon the land to waste it, and it be desolate, so that there is none that can pass because of the beasts: 14:16. If these three men shall be in it, as I live, saith the Lord, they shall deliver neither sons nor daughters: but they only shall be delivered, and the land shall be made desolate.