Ezekielchapter 22
31 verses · KJVEzekiel book hub →
Key verse
And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none.
It stands in scene C of the chapter, verses 23 to 31.
The chapter
Chapter summary
Three indictments of 'the bloody city.' First a catalog of her crimes, blood shed, fathers and mothers set light by, sojourners oppressed, the fatherless and widow wronged, sabbaths profaned, usury and extortion taken. Second, the furnace: Israel has become dross (brass, tin, iron and lead), gathered into the fire to be melted in the heat of Jehovah's wrath. Third, an audit of every class: prophets daubing with untempered mortar, priests who hide their eyes from the sabbaths, princes like wolves ravening the prey, and the people using oppression. Then the verse behind a thousand sermons on intercession: 'I sought for a man among them, that should… stand in the gap before me for the land… but I found none' (22:30).
Context
Prophecy · Ezekiel · Ezekiel overview
Where the chapter sits
Ezekiel 22 falls in Symbolic acts and judgment on Jerusalem (chapters 4–24). Lying on his side for 430 days; shaving the head with a sword; eating food in anxiety; the glory departs in stages (8–11); the prophet survives his wife's death without mourning (24).
Before it: Call and wheels-vision, chapters 1–3. After it: Oracles against the nations, chapters 25–32.
The whole shape of Ezekiel→The world behind this chapter
Ezekiel 22The history
The chapter is laid out like a legal charge sheet, and the offences are ordinary civic ones. Fathers and mothers treated with contempt. Resident foreigners squeezed. Orphans and widows wronged. Holy things despised and sabbaths ignored. Slander that got men killed. Bribes taken to shed blood. Loans made at interest and profit taken by extortion from neighbours.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
One accusation would have struck hardest at a priest. Her priests have done violence to my law: they have made no distinction between the holy and the common, and have taught no difference between the unclean and the clean. That was literally the priest's job description in the Law, to teach the difference. The complaint is not that they taught it badly but that they stopped.
The refining image at the centre is technical. Silver was purified by heating the ore in a furnace with bellows until the lead and other metals oxidized off and the dross could be skimmed away. Ezekiel piles the whole city into the furnace, silver, bronze, iron, lead, tin, and the fire is blown to full heat. What comes out is not silver. The alloy melts and the dross is all there is.
The list of guilty groups at the end is a roll call of the whole establishment: princes like wolves tearing prey, prophets whitewashing over it with false visions, priests violating the law, and the people of the land practising extortion and robbing the poor. God says He looked for a man to build the wall and stand in the breach before Him for the land, and found none.
What it meant to them
The exiles could name plenty of reasons for Babylon's success, better cavalry, bigger empire, Egyptian betrayal. This chapter puts the reason inside the city walls and inside the leadership.
It is also a mirror for the community by the canal. These were their own classes, their princes, their prophets, their priests, their landowners. If nobody would stand in the gap for Jerusalem, the question hanging over the room was who would stand in it now.
Sources cited
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
A. The bloody city and the sins done in her streets
1. (vv. 1-2)
a.the word of the Lord came unto me, saying: The Lord renews the prophet's commission in the sharpest terms yet, wilt thou judge, wilt thou judge the bloody city, the verb doubled before the list of abominations even begins. Henry reads the doubled verb as a call to a formal indictment rather than a private complaint, the prophet standing as a magistrate reciting a charge before sentence is passed. Gill notes the title bloody city ties this chapter to the watchman's charge of chapter 3, blood the recurring word for guilt this book will not let go.
Ezekiel 22:1, 1 voiceWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Ezekiel 22:1
“The fourth word of judgment Ezek. 22:1-16. The sins which have brought ruin upon Jerusalem are the sins which disgraced the pagan inhabitants of Canaan, whom the Israelites were to cast out (compare Lev. 18). The commission of like sins would insure like judgment.”
Ezekiel 22:2, 1 voice
Ezekiel 22:2
“Wilt thou judge the bloody city - Pronounce the sentence of death against the murderers. Show her all her abominations - And a most revolting and dreadful catalogue of these is in consequence exhibited.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2. (vv. 3-5)
a.The city sheddeth blood in the midst of it: The charge is stated in one sentence before the list begins: the city sheds blood in her own midst and makes idols to defile herself, bloodshed and idolatry named together as the root of everything that follows. Clarke reads the phrase that her time may come as judicial language, blood guilt hastening the very judgment the city fears rather than delaying it. JFB notes the mockery from nations near and far answers Jerusalem's earlier fame, the city's name become a byword among the very peoples she once outshone.
Ezekiel 22:3, 1 voice
Ezekiel 22:3
“Then say thou, thus saith the Lord God,.... For though the prophet was to sit as judge, yet in the name of the King of kings, under whose authority he acted: the city sheddeth blood in the midst of it; openly and impudently, in the face of all, and in great abundance; even innocent blood, as the Targum has it: murders were frequent and common, either through quarrels, or through unrighteous judgments in courts of judicature: that her time may come; to fill up the measure of her iniquity, and to receive the just punishment of her sins.”
Ezekiel 22:4, 2 voices
Ezekiel 22:4
“Thy days, - i. e., of judgment; “thy years,” i. e., of visitation (compare Eze 20:25, Eze 20:39). A reproach ... a mocking - Judah shall be like the Ammonites Eze 21:28.”
Ezekiel 22:4
“This crime is insisted most upon, for it was Jerusalem's measure-filling sin more than any; it is said to be that which the Lord would not pardon, 2 Kings xxiv. (1.) The princes of Israel, who should have been the protectors of injured innocence, every one were to their power to shed blood,”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
3. (vv. 6-12)
a.the princes of Israel, every one were in thee to their power to shed blood: The list runs through every rank and relation the covenant law protected, princes who use their power to shed blood, contempt shown to father and mother, oppression of the stranger, the fatherless and the widow, profaned sabbaths, and a run of sexual sins named plainly, incest with a father's wife, a daughter in law, a sister. Wesley reads the list as a point by point breach of the commandments and the case law built on them, no single command left unbroken by the time the catalogue ends. Gill notes the closing count, usury and extortion practiced on neighbours, and hast forgotten me, ties every social sin back to the same forgetting the two sisters of chapter 23 will name again.
Ezekiel 22:6, 1 voice
Ezekiel 22:6
“Rather, "The princes . . . each according to his power, were in thee, to shed blood" (as if this was the only object of their existence). "Power," literally, "arm"; they, who ought to have been patterns of justice, made their own arm of might their only law.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Ezekiel 22:8, 2 voices
Ezekiel 22:8
“Thou hast despised mine holy things,.... The holy place, the temple, and the worship of it; holy persons, the priests that officiated there; holy sacrifices offered up by them; the holy word of God read and explained; and all holy ordinances there administered. These words are directed to Jerusalem, the holy city, and to the inhabitants of it, who ought to have been holy men: and hast profaned my sabbaths; by doing their own work, and neglecting the service of God; and which was an inlet, as it usually is, to all manner of sin.”
Ezekiel 22:8
“Sabbath-breaking is an iniquity that is an inlet to all iniquity. Many have owned it to contribute as much to their ruin as any thing. Uncleanness and all manner of seventh-commandment sins, fruits of those vile affections to which God in a way of righteous judgment gives men up, to punish them for their idolatry and profanation of holy things.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Ezekiel 22:9, 1 voice
Ezekiel 22:9
“In thee are men that carry tales to shed blood,.... Innocent blood, as the Targum; such who go from house to house, as pedlars do, with their wares or spices, as the word (a) signifies; hence the Syriac version renders it "merchants"; and carry tales and lies of innocent persons, and stir up others against them to wrath and revenge, and shed their blood; or that go to the courts of judicature, and there accuse innocent persons, and bear false witness against them, to the taking away of their lives.”
Ezekiel 22:12, 1 voice
Ezekiel 22:12
“Those that pervert their ways forget the Lord their God, Jer. iii. He is to pass sentence upon Jerusalem for these crimes. Let her know that she has filled up the measure of her iniquity, and that her sins are such as forbid delays and call for speedy vengeance.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
4. (vv. 13-16)
a.I have smitten mine hand at thy dishonest gain: The Lord answers the catalogue with a gesture of finished patience, I have smitten mine hand at thy dishonest gain, and asks whether the city's heart or hands can hold out against what is coming. Henry reads the clenched hand as the sign of a decision made rather than merely threatened, the same gesture the book uses elsewhere over Jerusalem's fall. Barnes notes the scattering among the heathen answers the covenant curses of the law, so the exile becomes the working out of terms Israel already knew, and even the dispersion ends in the recognition formula, thou shalt know that I am the Lord.
Ezekiel 22:13, 1 voice
Ezekiel 22:13
“Behold, therefore, I have smitten mine hand at thy dishonest gain which thou hast made,.... As one amazed at it; or as filled with indignation against it; or as grieved and distressed at it; so Jarchi and Kimchi: or else as rejoicing at the punishment going to be inflicted on them for it. So the Septuagint renders it, "I will bring my hand upon them;'' and the Targum, "behold, I will bring my vengeance upon thee for the sins of mammon, &c.”
Ezekiel 22:16, 2 voices
Ezekiel 22:16
“And thou shalt take thine inheritance in thyself in the sight of the Heathen,.... No longer be the inheritance of God, but their own; and not have God to be their portion and inheritance, but themselves; and a poor portion and inheritance that must be, being in captivity, poverty, and distress; enjoying neither their civil nor religious liberties, as heretofore; it would be now manifest to the Heathens that they were forsaken of God, and left to themselves.”
Ezekiel 22:16
“FAIRBAIRN and others needlessly take the Hebrew from a different root, "thou shalt be polluted by ('in,' [HENDERSON]) thyself," &c.; the heathen shall regard thee as a polluted thing, who hast brought thine own reproach on thyself.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
B. Melted in the furnace like worthless dross
1. (vv. 17-22)
a.the word of the Lord came unto me, saying: The house of Israel becomes dross in the Lord's furnace, base metal mixed among the silver rather than silver itself, and Jerusalem is named the furnace where the smelting will happen. Keil reads the figure against actual metallurgy, dross is what refining is meant to remove, so the image promises no gentle correction but a melting down of the whole mixed mass. Fairbairn notes the coming siege is pictured in advance under this same figure, the city gathered and blown upon in the fire of my wrath, judgment as a furnace before it becomes a fact of history.
Ezekiel 22:17, 1 voice
Ezekiel 22:17
“The fifth word of judgment. The furnace. In the besieged city the people shall be tried and purged. Eze 22:18 Dross - A frequent metaphor which denotes not only the corruption of the people, who have become like base metal, but also a future purification whereby, the “dross” being burned away, the remnant of good may appear.”
Ezekiel 22:18, 3 voices
Ezekiel 22:18
“The house of Israel is to me become dross - They are all like base metal - brass, tin, iron, and lead alloyed together with silver. Ye must be put in the furnace, and subjected to the most intense fire, till your impurities are consumed away. No ordinary means will avail any thing; the most violent must be resorted to.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Ezekiel 22:18
“Dross - Utterly degenerate, and base metal. The furnace - The afflictions I have laid upon them have not bettered them. The dross - While they loved mercy, did justly, walked humbly with their God, they were as silver; now they are but dross.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Ezekiel 22:18
“That state, in David's and Solomon's time, had been a head of gold; when the kingdoms were divided it was as the arms of silver. It has degenerated into baser metal, of no value in comparison with what it formerly was: They are all brass, and tin, and iron, and lead, which some make to signify divers sorts of sinners among them.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Ezekiel 22:19, 1 voice
Ezekiel 22:19
“I will gather you - Jerusalem is represented here as the fining pot; all the people are to be gathered together in it, and the Chaldean fire is to knelt the whole. And God will increase thy sufferings: as the refiner blows the fire with his bellows, so God will blow upon you with the fire of his wrath, Eze 22:21.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Ezekiel 22:20, 1 voice
Ezekiel 22:20
“As they gather silver, and brass, and iron, and lead, and tin, into the midst of the furnace,.... As refiners of metal do; though not together, as here, but each metal apart.”
Ezekiel 22:21, 1 voice
Ezekiel 22:21
“Yea, I will gather you, and blow upon you in the fire of my wrath,.... Not only gather them in wrath, as before; but blow upon them in wrath, which is often compared to fire in Scripture; and besides, the city and temple of Jerusalem were to be burnt, and were burnt with material fire, in consequence of God's displeasure against his people: and ye shall be melted in the midst thereof; of the city of Jerusalem; be destroyed by one judgment or another in it; or perish in the conflagration of it.”
C. Princes, priests, prophets: and no one to stand in the gap
1. (vv. 23-29)
a.the word of the Lord came unto me, saying: A second word names the land itself unrained upon in the day of indignation, then indicts every order of leadership in turn, prophets who conspire like a ravening lion and daub lies in the Lord's own name, priests who violate the law and put no difference between the holy and the profane, princes who shed blood like wolves for dishonest gain, and the people who follow with oppression of the poor and the stranger. Henry reads the fourfold list as deliberate, no rank exempted and no excuse left standing, since the very officers meant to guard holiness are named as its worst offenders. Gill notes the priests' failure, no difference between the holy and profane, echoes the one interpreted point of the temple vision's later chambers, the same failure the restored sanctuary is built to prevent.
Ezekiel 22:23, 1 voice
Ezekiel 22:23
“The sixth word of judgment. The special sins of princes, priests, and people. Eze 22:26 Violated - Better as in margin; to offer “violence” to the Law is to misinterpret it. It was the special office of the priests to keep up the distinction between “holy” and “unholy,” “clean” and “unclean” Lev 10:10. Eze 22:28 See the marginal reference note.”
Ezekiel 22:24, 3 voices
Ezekiel 22:24
“Son of man, say unto her, thou land,.... Thou land of Israel, as the Targum: thou art not cleansed; from filthiness, by the fire of divine judgments; or reformed from sins, by the instructions, cautions, and exhortations of the prophets; none of these things had any effect upon her to make her wiser and better.”
Ezekiel 22:24
“Thou art the land that is not cleansed - Thou art like a country where there is no rain, either to cleanse the garments, or fertilize the ground.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Ezekiel 22:24
“Her - The land of Israel. Not cleansed - Though God's judgments have been as violent floods; and as hottest fires. Nor rained upon - Yet neither thy filth hath been carried away, nor thy dross melted out of thee.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Ezekiel 22:25, 3 voices
Ezekiel 22:25
“They are mentioned first, as their bad influence extended the widest. prey--Their aim was greed of gain, "treasure, and precious things" (Ho 6:9; Mt 23:14). made . . . many widows--by occasioning, through false prophecies, the war with the Chaldeans in which the husbands fell.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Ezekiel 22:25
“A conspiracy - A contrivance, to speak all alike, smooth words, and give out promises of peace and safety. The treasure - As a reward of their lies. Made her - By persuading Zedekiah to hold out the war, which filled Jerusalem with dead husbands, and forlorn widows.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Ezekiel 22:25
“Satan is not divided against himself. The prophets are in conspiracy with the murderers and oppressors, to patronise and protect them in their wickedness, and justify what they did with their false prophecies, provided they may come in sharers with them in the profits of it.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Ezekiel 22:26, 2 voices
Ezekiel 22:26
"Holy" means, what is dedicated to God; "profane," what is in common use; "unclean," what is forbidden to be eaten; "clean," what is lawful to be eaten.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Ezekiel 22:26
“My holy things - Sacrifices, and oblations. Put no difference - Neither have they in their practice, differenced holy and profane, nor in their teaching acquainted the people with the difference, nor in the exercise of their authority, separated the profane from the holy, either persons, or things. Hid their eyes - Despised, and would not see the holiness of the sabbaths.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Ezekiel 22:27, 1 voice
Ezekiel 22:27
“All their business was to gratify, [1.] Their own pride and ambition, by making themselves arbitrary and formidable. [2.] Their own malice and revenge, by shedding blood and destroying souls, sacrificing to their cruelty all those that stood in their way or had in any thing disobliged them. [3.] Their own avarice; all they aim at is to get dishonest gain, by crushing and oppressing their subject.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Ezekiel 22:28, 2 voices
Ezekiel 22:28
“And her prophets have daubed them with untempered mortar,.... Palliated their sins, declared it to be right to shed the blood they did; and seize on the estates of men; but this, though it might for a while satisfy the consciences of these princes, and stop the clamours of the people against them; yet would not last long, but be like the building of a wall with bad stuff, which will not stand; and daubing it with mortar, which will soon wash off.”
Ezekiel 22:28
“They pretend to be seers, but they see vanity; they pretend to be diviners, but they divine lies; they pretend a warrant from Heaven for what they say, and that it is all as true as gospel; they say, Thus saith the Lord God, but it is all a sham, for the Lord has not spoken any such thing.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Ezekiel 22:29, 1 voice
Ezekiel 22:29
“The rich oppress the poor, masters their servants, landlords their tenants, and even parents their own children; nay, the buyers and sellers will find some way to oppress one another. This is such a sin as, when it is national, is indeed a national judgment, and is threatened as such.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2. (vv. 30-31)
a.stand in the gap before me for the land: The Lord says he sought a man to make up the hedge and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, and found none, the single most quoted verse of the chapter. Clarke reads the figure from siege warfare, a breach in a city wall that one defender might have held, applied here to intercession that might have turned judgment aside. Fairbairn notes the verse does not blame the absence of prophets, since Ezekiel himself stands in that office, but the absence of any one willing to plead for the land, and the chapter closes with the fury poured out because no one stood.
Ezekiel 22:30, 4 voices
Ezekiel 22:30
“I sought for a man - I saw that there was a grievous breach made in the moral state and feeling of the people, and I sought for a man that would stand in the gap; that would faithfully exhort, reprove and counsel with all long-suffering and doctrine. But none was to be found!”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Ezekiel 22:30
“In these sobering verses from Ezekiel, God was unable to find anyone to release the necessary intercession and, tragically, had to send judgment.”
Ezekiel 22:30
“None now, of the godly, knowing the desperate state of the people, and God's purpose as to them, was willing longer to interpose between God's wrath and them. And none "among them," that is, among those just enumerated as guilty of such sins (Eze 22:25-29), was morally able for such an office.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Ezekiel 22:30
“Note, (1.) Sin makes a gap in the hedge of protection that is about a people at which good things run out from them and evil things pour in upon them, a gap by which God enters to destroy them. (2.) There is a way of standing in the gap, and making up the breach against the judgments of God, by repentance, and prayer, and reformation.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Ezekiel 22:31, 1 voice
Ezekiel 22:31
“Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them,.... Like a mighty torrent, carrying all before it: I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath; by the sword, famine, pestilence, and captivity: their own way have I recompensed on their heads, saith the Lord; brought just punishment upon them, such as their ways and works deserved; "the vengeance of their way,'' as the Targum.”
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Ezekiel 22. 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 10 works. Open for the list.
This page draws on Adam Clarke; Albert Barnes; Carl Friedrich Keil, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Ezekiel; Dutch Sheets, Give Him 15 daily devotional, "The Land is Being Healed" (October 21, 2025) (2025); Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871); Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Gill; John Wesley; Matthew Henry and Patrick Fairbairn, An Exposition of Ezekiel.
Keep studying
On this page
Studies1