Ezekielchapter 14
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Speaks with:Ezekiel 14×6Ezekiel 20×4Leviticus 26×3Ezekiel 5×3Ezekiel 7×2Ezekiel 18×2
Summary
Chapter summary
Elders sit before Ezekiel to inquire of Jehovah, but 'these men have taken their idols into their heart', the answer they get will match the idols they brought, so that God may take the house of Israel in their own heart. The chapter then names the four sore judgments (sword, famine, evil beasts, pestilence) and delivers its famous verdict on borrowed righteousness: though Noah, Daniel, and Job stood in the land, 'they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness,' not son nor daughter. Yet even so a remnant is brought out, and seeing their way and their doings, 'ye shall be comforted concerning the evil that I have brought.'
Context
Prophecy · Ezekiel — Ezekiel overview
- A. 1–11 Elders with idols set up in their hearts
- B. 12–20 Noah, Daniel, and Job could save only themselves
- C. 21–23 A remnant brought out to comfort you
The outline
A.Elders with idols set up in their heartsvv. 1 to 11
Read vv. 1 to 11 →B.Noah, Daniel, and Job could save only themselvesvv. 12 to 20
Read vv. 12 to 20 →C.A remnant brought out to comfort youvv. 21 to 23
Read vv. 21 to 23 →
The world behind this chapter
Ezekiel 14The history
Coming to a prophet to inquire was a formal act, and everyone in the ancient world had a version of it: you went to the oracle, the diviner or the seer with a question, usually a practical one, and you expected an answer. Kings did it before battles. The elders here are following the normal procedure.
The phrase God uses is unusually inward: these men have taken their idols into their hearts and put the stumbling block of their guilt before their faces. The problem is not merely a carved object in a shrine; it is what they have already decided to want. God says He will answer such a man according to the multitude of his idols — that is, the answer he gets will be the answer his own heart has already chosen.
The three righteous men named are all outsiders to Israel's covenant story: Noah before the nations divided, Job in the land of Uz, and Daniel. Most read Daniel as the exile taken to Babylon in 605 BC, who was already famous at the imperial court by this date; some scholars instead point to Danel, a righteous king in the Ugaritic Aqhat tablets, mainly because of the spelling. The traditional identification with Daniel of Babylon fits Ezekiel's own generation and is the reading followed here.
The four judgments listed — sword, famine, wild beasts, plague — are a standard set. Ancient treaty curses list the same disasters in the same kind of sequence, and the Law of Moses uses them too. Ezekiel's hearers would have recognized the list the way we recognize a legal formula.
What it meant to them
The elders came for a word about when they would go home. What they got was a ruling that even the presence of the three most famously righteous men in memory could not save a condemned city — they would deliver only themselves.
That was a demolition of the thing the exiles were leaning on hardest: the idea that Jerusalem's good people, or its temple, or its history, would carry the rest. And yet the chapter ends with survivors arriving in Babylon whose conduct will show the exiles why it happened, so that they will be consoled. Even the proof of judgment is given as a comfort.
Sources cited
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Ezekiel
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Ezekiel 14. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.