What does Ezechiel Chapter 22 say, and which statements belong to its speaker?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

Bloodshed and oppression precede scattering. Dross imagery announces gathering and melting. A missing advocate precedes recompense.

Chapter breakdown

Ezechiel 22 commissions judgment of Jerusalem as the city of blood, showing its abominations. Bloodshed and self-defiling idols bring the appointed time, reproach and mockery among countries near and far. Princes use their arms for bloodshed; parents are abused, strangers oppressed and orphans and widows grieved. Sanctuaries are despised and sabbaths profaned. Slanderers shed blood, mountain meals accompany wickedness, and sexual offenses include a father's nakedness, a menstruous woman, a neighbour's wife, a daughter-in-law and a sister. Gifts for bloodshed, usury and increase, covetous oppression and forgetting the Lord complete this catalogue. Specific magistrates, rivals, highway robbery and daily frequency are not supplied.

The Lord claps his hands at covetousness and blood and asks whether hearts and hands will endure his coming days. Dispersion among nations ends uncleanness; possession in the Gentiles' sight brings recognition. Israel is compared with dross, naming brass, tin, iron and lead in a furnace and dross of silver. Gathering in Jerusalem and melting with wrath continue the image. The text does not specify copper instead of brass, scrap ore, a technical refining procedure or destruction of every individual without exception.

The unclean land lacks rain in the day of wrath. Conspiring prophets devour souls, take riches and hire and make widows like a roaring lion. Priests fail to distinguish holy and profane or clean and polluted and turn from sabbaths. Princes shed blood for gains like wolves; prophets daub without tempering mortar, claiming divine speech when the Lord has not spoken. People oppress and rob the poor, needy and strangers by calumny without judgment. The Lord finds nobody to set up a hedge and stand in the gap before him for the land, then pours out wrath and renders their way on their heads. This search is not a universal theorem that the presence or absence of one mediator mechanically determines every nation's survival.

The story inside

Opening: Bloodshed and oppression precede scattering. Development: Dross imagery announces gathering and melting. Conclusion: A missing advocate precedes recompense.

Lessons worth keeping

1
Bloodshed and oppression precede scattering.
2
Dross imagery announces gathering and melting.
3
A missing advocate precedes recompense.

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 93583–93593
22:3. And thou shalt shew her all her abominations, and shalt say: Thus saith the Lord God: This is the city that sheddeth blood in the midst of her, that her time may come: and that hath made idols against herself, to defile herself. 22:4. Thou art become guilty in thy blood which thou hast shed: and thou art defiled in thy idols which thou hast made: and thou hast made thy days to draw near, and hast brought on the time of thy years: therefore have I made thee a reproach to the Gentiles, and a mockery to all countries.
Lines 93637–93648
22:18. Son of man, the house of Israel is become dross to me: all these are brass, and tin, and iron, and lead, in the midst of the furnace: they are become the dross of silver. 22:19. Therefore thus saith the Lord God: Because you are all turned into dross, therefore behold I will gather you together in the midst of Jerusalem. 22:20. As they gather silver, and brass, and tin, and iron, and lead in the midst of the furnace: that I may kindle a fire in it to melt it: so will I gather you together in my fury and in my wrath, and will take my rest, and I will melt you down.
Lines 93685–93691
22:30. And I sought among them for a man that might set up a hedge, and stand in the gap before me in favour of the land, that I might not destroy it: and I found none. 22:31. And I poured out my indignation upon them, in the fire of my wrath I consumed them: I have rendered their way upon their own head, saith the Lord God.