Ezekiel 14

1-23 God’s Judgments Justified

• When elders come to Ezekiel, God tells him that they love their idols (“have taken them into their hearts”), which has put a barrier between them and God.
• To any who are idolatrous and yet come to God’s prophet for counsel, God will speak directly: Repent. Reject your idols, or I will set my face against you and cut you off from amid my people – “and you shall know that I am the LORD.”
• I will allow deluded prophets to mislead you, but both the prophet and those who inquire of them will be punished, in order to protect my people from defilement.
• When a land sins against me, no one is able to save it – not even Noah, Daniel or Job.
  • Not if I send a famine,
  • Not if I sent wild animals to ravage it,
  • Not if I sent a sword upon it,
  • Not if I sent pestilence.
• They would be saved by their own righteousness, but they would not be able to save the others. These were all men known for their righteousness and prayers on behalf of others.
• Yet even when I send my four deadly acts of judgment, some will survive.
• You will be consoled by the survivors’ ways and deeds, and “you shall know that it was not without cause that I did all that I have done in it.” God’s purpose here, then, is not punishment only because he’s angry, but to keep the defilement from those who remain faithful to him – much like he did in the flood. The difference here is that these are his chosen people.