Ezekiel - Lesson 16

Lesson number 16, The Fate of Fake Prophets, A Warning Against Prophetic Hijacking, Ezekiel 14 1 to 11. This is the last of six prophetic messages concerned with the abuse of prophecy, either by the people who heard the prophecies, that's 1221 to 25 and 1226 to 28, or by those who claimed to hold the office of the prophet. This is chapter 13, both the male prophets in verses 1 to 16 and then the female prophets in 17 to 23. In chapter 14, our present text, it brings both together people who hypocritically sought a word from the true prophet and those false prophets who got sucked in by pressure from the people to make such pronouncements. This is 14, 1 to 11. The structure of our passage is very simple because fixed prophetic formulas mark the transitions. There's the introduction and preamble, verses 1 and 2, the question for the prophet, verse 3, the answer for the people, verses 4 to 11, and there are a couple of answers. The first answer, verses 4 to 5, signaled by, therefore speak to them, and the second answer, verses 6 to 11, signaled by, therefore say to the house of Israel. That, therefore, always gets our attention. But those who were with us through chapters 8 to 11 will notice that although this passage is much shorter, there are many parallels in the sequence of events, beginning with the appearance of the elders from the community of exiles before the prophet. 8, 1 and 14, 1 are parallel. In its style and vocabulary, these 11 verses exhibit many links with the instructions on holiness in Leviticus 17 to 26. We shouldn't be surprised. Ezekiel is the prophetic priest, so we should expect material or echoes or tones from the priestly texts in the Pentateuch. The holiness code, it's often called that. I prefer instructions on holiness. It's less legal in its style than the word code suggests. There, in the context of the revelation of the stipulations of his covenant with Israel, Yahweh had revealed in remarkable detail what faithful living according to the standards of the covenant looked like. Stylistic links also give the present text a quasi-legal flavor, as Yahweh presented his case against his people. His intent was to remind the Israelites that their theology and ethic derive from Yahweh himself, and it was to him that they were accountable, if they were really community covenant people. If any of his people were familiar with the Leviticus texts, they will have recognized that in this message, the prophet intentionally and ironically dipped deeply into the well of Israel's sacred legal tradition. With Billy Graham, for every point Ezekiel made in this passage, he could have said, the Bible says. Well, let's look at the introduction, verses 1 and 2. Some of the elders of Israel came to me and sat down in front of me. Then the following message of Yahweh came to me. Well, this scene opens with guests in Ezekiel's house who had made themselves at home and sat down in front of him. As was the case in 8-1, these visitors were called the elders from the house of Israel. Although the exilic community in Babylon consisted largely of Judahites and Levites like Ezekiel, Ezekiel regularly used the name Israel theocratically, that is, of whoever was left of the covenant community and declared at least verbally their allegiance to Yahweh. They were giving their boys names like Jeazaniah and Pelatiah, with that Yah on the end, a reference to Yahweh is our benefactor. Their status as elders and their posture of sitting before the prophet suggests either the elders have come for an audience with a superior or they were holding an official meeting, like the elders of Moab before Balaam in Numbers 22.8, or the sons of the prophets before Elisha in 2 Kings 4.38, or the elders before Elisha, 2 Kings 6.32, and the elders of Judah before Ezekiel, as we saw in 8-1. But they were not there on private business. They represented the community and had come to him for a word from Yahweh, the God of Israel. Whatever personal feelings they had about the prophet, apparently some crisis had driven them to seek another word from God through him, hopefully, of course, a word of reassurance through divine insight into the future of their nation. The prophet would indeed respond, but to ensure that the elders grasped that Ezekiel's message was not from his own mind, like the false prophets in chapter 13, but it came from Yahweh, again, in autobiographical form, he introduced his words with the word-event formula, the word that the Lord came to be saying. As had been the case in chapter 8, the elders' desire for a word from God, it worked. As they sat in front of Ezekiel, the true prophet received a message from Yahweh. But this time it came not in the form of a vision, chapters 8-11, but as a verbal declaration. If the elders had come for a reassuring word from Yahweh, the message that followed must have caught them off guard. On the surface, their inquiry looks noble, orthodox, and serious, but it was of a peace with their fundamentally idolatrous disposition and all their other rebellious actions. And so, rather than promising them a soon return to Jerusalem, which is probably what they were hoping to hear, Yahweh would declare in no uncertain terms that he would have none of their fake display of interest in true revelation. Speaking with Yahweh's voice, Ezekiel called the entire nation to repent of their syncretistic religious commitments or face the certain judgment of the covenant Lord. Indeed, here, Yahweh would present the objections to them as a capital case and declare that his judgment was certain. Although the people probably came to hear a new revelation from Yahweh, he responded with an ancient, traditional word. What you people need to do is remember what I said long ago. If they had hidden the word of God in their hearts, they would have had no need to come to the prophet. In verse 3, we hear their question for the prophet. As I noted earlier, God's speech opened with a rhetorical question. Human, these men have set up their dung pellets on their hearts, and they have placed their iniquitous stumbling block right in front of their faces. But shall I really allow myself to be consulted by them? This opening statement is fascinating and actually quite exceptional because God addressed it to his prophet, Ezekiel, directly.

This verse would read like a transcript of Yahweh's private thoughts. Like Abraham in Genesis 18, 16 to 33, Ezekiel as a prophet was a member of the heavenly council, and now the head of the council is asking, should I let myself be consulted like this? He had become a confidant of Yahweh, drawn into the Lord's own internal struggles. This is a true prophet. However, this time it was not over outsiders like those represented by Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18. It was the Lord's own people. Here we see Yahweh remarkably transparent with his prophet, declaring his disposition toward Israel in two chiastic and conceptually, but conceptually parallel lines reflecting the Hebrew word order. These men have set up their dung pellets on their hearts, and their iniquitous stumbling block they have placed in front of their faces. A-B-B-A pattern. Although none of these expressions is new in the book, the way Yahweh put them together raises several questions about the exile's idolatrous practices. Here the issue was not so much the external cultic actions, but how the people have internalized their idolatry. As elsewhere in the book, their hearts, their minds, refers to their inner being involved in rational, moral, and spiritual commitments. In Deuteronomy 6.6, Moses had charged the Israelites to put these commands, that is his instructions in Deuteronomy, on their hearts, imprint them on their minds. To expose the people's fundamentally faulty commitments in the first line, and four additional times in verses four to seven, Yahweh used his favorite expression for idols in this book, gilulim, those round pellets of sheep droppings, or ibex droppings, or goat droppings. He hereby declared that they were committed to a pile of manure instead of the revealed will of God. In the second line, God interpreted and concretized the object of the devotion as the stumbling block of their iniquity. As I noted in our first encounter with a word for stumbling block in 320, this refers to an object that people place in others' paths to trip them up intentionally. Rational people would never think of placing these objects in their own path, but these people are tripping over manure piles that they have themselves placed right in front of their eyes. For this reason, we should not be surprised that he labeled this inquiry, for how he labeled this inquiry, the Hebrew word awon means perversion, twistedness. Yahweh looked upon all their idolatry as twisted thinking and perverse behavior, that which is awful, or ofal, O-F-F-A-L, they have made into a god. This metaphor is even stronger and shocking than Jeremiah's, who had compared idolatrous worship to seeking water from cracked cisterns instead of drinking from the living fresh water that the Lord offered, Jeremiah 2.13. Here, Ezekiel was not only talking about the futility of idolatry, it was also its smelliness. Their spiritual commitments and their religious practices were as perverse as they could be. They had set up mounds of smelly dung in front of their faces and erected images made of feces in their hearts. Yahweh did not specify what kinds of idolatrous practices he had in mind. Perhaps the exiles had become enamored with the Babylonian practices all around them. More likely, they were inwardly longing for the idolatrous observances they had left behind in Judah, if only we could go back there, like those portrayed in chapter 8. Although separated physically from their homeland, these exiles had not yet been weaned of the syncretistic ways that had precipitated their present state in Babylon. These pagan commitments remained the most serious obstacle to divine favor. However, despite the elders' pagan commitments, they had the chutzpah, the gall, unmitigated gall, to appear before the prophet to demand a message from Yahweh. The rhetorical question in verse 3b highlights Yahweh's dilemma. Shall I really allow myself to be consulted by them? Can he take the inquiry of this delegation seriously when at heart they are bent on idolatry? In contexts like this, involving humanly initiated inquiry of a deity, the expression darash, to seek, to search, means to try to discover through revelation the will or disposition of the God. Such requests or demands for divine knowledge could be made directly, as in the case of Ahaziah, who sent messengers directly to Beelzebub, the god of Ekron, 2 Kings 1, 2-6. But more commonly, it involved mediums, like the spirits of departed dead or witches and wizards. In short, anyone recognized as having an ear with a deity, you would go and seek a word from them. Since the paganized Israelites understood this to be a primary function of prophets, and since Ezekiel actually claimed to be one, even if they had no respect for him, they approached him for a word from Yahweh. Often the inquiry was a response to a crisis, and the aim was to receive divine revelation about the problem. We have this in 1 Samuel 28-7 or 1 Kings 22-5 or Isaiah 9-19-3. Apparently, these elders had come to Ezekiel as a fortune-teller. He could give them divine insight into the current situation in exile and the fate of their nation back home. The prophet might even force Yahweh's hand to act quickly on their behalf, if he was so inclined. The delegates appeared to have been serious. However, their idolatry had blinded them to the incongruity of their presence before the prophet of Yahweh. They seemed unaware that Yahweh tolerated no rivals and that he was under no obligation to respond to people whose spiritual standing was deeply compromised, especially these guys whose idols were piles of dung. But he answered with a couple of answers. His first answer comes in verses 4-5. Given the Lord's complaint about the people's idolatrous state and his earlier determination not to listen to their cries, 8-18, I will not listen to them though they scream in my ears. We expect that Yahweh would answer his own rhetorical question in verse 3 negatively. No way will I let myself listen to them. So we are surprised in verse 4 when Ezekiel received a message that he was to pass on to the visitors. So speak to them, tell them, thus has the Lord Yahweh declared. If anyone from the house of Israel who sets up his idols on his heart or places an iniquitous stumbling block right in front of his face and then approaches the prophet, I, Yahweh, will respond to him accordingly, according to the multitude of his idols. Again, the word for idols is gililim, so I may seize the whole house of Israel, all who have defected from me. I could seize them by their hearts. Superficially, it looks like Ezekiel, functioning as a medium, was able to manipulate Yahweh on behalf of the inquirers. But Yahweh's consistent references to the Israelites in the third person those people reminds us that in verse 3 he was talking only to the prophet. Like the Lord had done with Abraham in Genesis 18 with reference to Sodom and Gomorrah, in this paragraph Yahweh was admitting the prophet into the inner recesses of his mind but excluding the people. And Yahweh declared to his prophet that yes, if anyone who had installed images of manure on his heart or set them up right in front of his face had the gall to approach his designated prophet, he would certainly respond. But Yahweh quickly added that if he responded, it was not to satisfy the inquirers with the answer to their question, whatever that was. So he commanded Ezekiel to announce the divine reaction to their inquiry, which far from predicting a quick resolution of their social political concerns, it functioned as a formal criminal indictment. Yahweh cast his charges against the people in the form of a legal statement. By announcing this judgment, the prophet was to transform the elder's request for an oracle into a legal case against those who would inquire of Yahweh. They were the ones who must answer to him, not he to them. He is Yahweh. The covenant Lord's anger has been ignited first by their apostasy and now by their insincerity, because all he could see was the huge pile of dung on their minds and before their faces. Yahweh's response bypassed the reason for their coming altogether. The Lord's rhetorical strategy in verse 5 is bizarre. Since the problem with the people was the idols they had set up on their hearts, I suppose it's appropriate that he should talk about seizing the whole house of Israel by their hearts, or minds, that's your inner being. The verb taphas, to seize, occurs elsewhere for the forceful apprehension of prisoners and captives, or the conquest of the city, or the capture of animals, as we will see in 19.4 and 8. The full statement, so I may seize the whole house of Israel, all who have defected from me by their hearts, that's odd, but it highlighted the locus of the problem. There was no point in dealing with externals when the disposition of their hearts needed to be arrested. The last line of verse 5 summarized the scope of the problem. The entire nation had defected from him, although other gods wouldn't mind if people worshipped other gods at the same time. Yahweh would tolerate no rival deities. Israel's first and supreme command was, you shall have no other gods beside or besides me. And why would they want to? After all, Yahweh, after all Yahweh had done for them, Israel's idolatry signified defection from the covenant god, their savior god, their redeemer god, their provider god, who had given them the land and all the other benefits. To Yahweh, the exile's internalized idolatry was as alienating as the overt pagan practices the prophet observed in visionary form in chapter 8. So much for the first answer. In verses 6 to 11, we have the second answer. Yahweh directed his second announcement of judgment straight at the people sitting before Ezekiel and the community they represented. Therefore, say to the house of Israel, thus has the Lord Yahweh declared, repent and turn away from your pellets of dung, turn your faces away from all your abominations. Surely, if anyone from the house of Israel or from the aliens who reside in Israel defects from me, turns from me by setting up his idols, dung piles in his heart and placing his iniquitous stumbling block right in front of his face, and then comes to the prophet to inquire of me through him, I am Yahweh, I will respond to him in person, I will set my face against that person, I will make him a sign and a proverb, I will cut him off from the midst of my people, then you will know that I am Yahweh. And if a prophet is deceived into making a pronouncement, I, Yahweh, am the one who has deceived that prophet, I will stretch out my hand against him and destroy him from the midst of my people. They will bear their punishment, and the inquirer and the prophet will be punished the same, so that the house of Israel may never again stray away from me and never again defile themselves with all their rebellious actions. Then they will be my people, and I will be their God, the declaration of the Lord Yahweh. Well, the speech that Yahweh charged Ezekiel to deliver to those seated before him opens on a surprising note, urgently calling the community of exiles to repent of their idolatry. This is unexpected because it came immediately after what we thought had been an announcement of inevitable judgment in verses 4 and 5, and because it seems to contradict earlier instructions to Ezekiel that he was never to intercede on the people's behalf, 326. How then shall we explain the present appeal? More importantly, Yahweh highlighted Israel's own responsibility for her own fate. His refusal to answer the elders' inquiry sent a signal that his decision to judge the nation was irrevocable. It won't be changed. It won't be withdrawn. His prophet Ezekiel was not to plead that Yahweh would hold back his judgment. He had fixed the date of Jerusalem's doom, 586 BC, was on his calendar. It loomed on the horizon, and it could not be changed. Even so, his call for repentance reflected Yahweh's deepest desire, especially for the exiles. They could repent. For them, there is this opportunity. He desired the willing obedience of his people, and it opened the door just a crack to a new future for the immediate exilic audience. For Jerusalem, there was no hope, no point in intercession, but here, perhaps. But that future was not inevitable either. Individual and communal well-being would depend on the people getting right with God. In verses 7 to 8, Yahweh reiterated the urgency of the situation, repeating the issue raised earlier in verses 4 to 5. All who are guilty of syncretistic commitments will answer directly to him. You can worship other gods, but you will answer to me. But his tone had changed, and he added some new details. First, he extended his plea to turn back from their idols and all their abominable commitments. He extended it to aliens and sojourners who had attached themselves to Israel. The Lord lifted the expression, the sojourner who sojourns in Israel, from Leviticus 17.8 and 10 and elsewhere, even though it didn't fit the exilic context. These sojourners may have been Babylonians or fellow deportees from other lands in Babylon who have attached themselves to the group of exiles from Judah by the River Kibar. But to their own demise, if they would not repent, anybody who hung on to this community, his fate would be like that of the community. Second, Yahweh's announcement creatively recasts the actions mentioned in verses 4 to 5 in four lines that, again, are both chiastic and antithetical. They defect from Yahweh. That's A. They bring up their idols on their minds, B. B-prime, they place the iniquitous stumbling blocks before their faces, and A-prime, they seek Yahweh. See how it's an A-B-B-A pattern again. The first and last line seem to clash with the two internal lines. But this reflects what we have observed to this point. Even though Ezekiel's country folk have defected from Yahweh by serving idols, with incredible gall they came to the prophet to seek a word from Yahweh, the God of Israel. I doubt the elders were prepared for the answer they got. Yahweh expressed his reaction to their double-mindedness with four terse statements. But before he began, he reintroduced himself. I am Yahweh. I will respond to him in person. This introduction recalled the words that thundered from Sinai many centuries earlier and infused this prophecy with an aura of authority. But Yahweh quickly followed up this statement with an avowal to respond personally and directly to the people's idolatry. They may have cushioned their inquiry by approaching him through an intermediary, Ezekiel, and probably expected him to relay Yahweh's answer back to them, perhaps like he had done after the great temple vision. But this time, the response would be neither aural, sound, nor visionary. Yahweh would answer with a decisive action, the main elements of which are outlined in three parallel lines, each with its own formulaic flavor. First, Yahweh would set his face against that person. This idiom expresses a hostile disposition, the opposite of, may the Lord make his face shine upon you and lift up his face to you, that is, smile upon you, in the Aaronic blessing, number 6, 24 to 26. This is the opposite. Second, Yahweh would make Israel an example of the fate of idolaters who fell into the hands of God. Ezekiel expressed this notion with two words. The first, oath, sign, is usually associated with signs designed to legitimize a person or to promote faith in God, the signs that God gave Moses to perform in front of the Israelites to convince them that, yes, God had sent him, and elsewhere. Here, it functions negatively. Israel's demise will prove to all who witness the coming events God's disposition toward idolaters. They will be the sign and will motivate observers to recognize his presence and his activity. The connotations of the second word, Mishalim, in this context is also negative. When God is done, the name Israel would become proverbial. Mishal is a proverb, proverbial for divinely imposed disaster. Yahweh had declared the full force of the idiom in his warning of the consequences of idolatry to Solomon in 1 Kings 9, 6 to 9. He would make Israel a proverb, Mishal, and a byword, among the peoples by cutting the nation off from the land and casting his temple out of his sight if they would ever go off track. As Moses had predicted in Deuteronomy 29, passersby would react with astonishment, with hissing and puzzlement over the Lord's treatment of his own covenant people. What made the God of this people so angry that this is what happened to them? Third, Yahweh would cut off the idolater from the midst of his people. This warning specifically applies Leviticus 20, 2 to 5 to the present exilic situation, although sometimes to cut off means to excommunicate. The fact that in verse 9 he talked about destroying suggests more serious consequences. This is not just excommunicating. It probably refers to premature death directly at the hands of God. The prospects for the people who had approached Ezekiel for a word from God were frightening. At this point, their bond with the land had already been severed by their exile, but now Yahweh threatened to cut them off from himself. Incredibly, perhaps, but when they would be cut off, they would finally acknowledge the person and presence of Yahweh. Remarkably, the previous call for repentance had opened the door to a better fate ever so slightly. Although the doom of those who remained in Jerusalem was sealed, if the exiles would turn their faces away from their feces and turn toward Yahweh alone, then they would abandon their piles of manure. They could escape his fury. They still had the choice to acknowledge Yahweh on his terms voluntarily now or to be forced to do so involuntarily on that great and terrible day. As Paul declared in Philippians 2, 10 to 11, on that day, at the name of Jesus, Yahweh incarnate, every knee will bow in submission and homage. And you can either do it voluntarily in advance or involuntarily in the end, but it will happen. But Ezekiel did not waste time or energy preaching repentance. In verse 9, he shifted his attention from clients who abused the prophetic office with their hypocritical motivations to the false prophets themselves, those who took advantage of the people's insecurity by offering reassuring counterfeit oracles. But professional prophets who catered to idolaters and issued pronouncements as if they came from Yahweh became accomplices in their crime compared to Deuteronomy 13, 2 to 6 and 1820. Ezekiel's attack on false prophets takes the form of another quasi-legal pronouncement, but his argument is shocking. It raised all sorts of questions about Yahweh's integrity that were as serious as the insincerity of the officials Ezekiel challenged. First, Yahweh claimed to have deceived the prophets with false messages of hope, and then he threatened to destroy them from having delivered them to the people. Really? How can God mislead a person and then punish him for following his lead? There's a problem here. Among Israel's neighbors, the notion of divine deception was a major problem. In their view, the gods often competed among themselves for mastery over earthly affairs, and as they tried to outdo each other, they often deceived their human clients. At Mari, up the Euphrates from Babylon in the second millennium, authorities developed the custom of taking a tuft of the prophet's hair and a piece of cloth from the fringe of his garment to determine whether an official had actually received a message from his god, or whether it lacked divine authorization. Of course, Orthodox believers recognize that as one thing for extra-biblical texts to wrestle with the capriciousness of the gods, but quite another for Yahweh to claim to have deceived prophets, and for this true prophet to attribute deceit to him. Even the pagan prophet Balaam recognized this in Numbers 23, 19 to 20. Balaam said, God is not man that he should lie, or the son of man that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? Look, I received a command to bless. He has blessed. I cannot revoke it. But the problem is especially acute in the face of Orthodoxy's affirmations of God's absolute trustworthiness and veracity, and especially Ezekiel's frequent declaration, I am Yahweh, I have spoken, I will act according to my word. No prophet struggled more intensely with a problem of divine deceit than Ezekiel's contemporary Jeremiah. Responding to a bitter oracle of judgment that he was to pronounce upon Judah, he exclaimed, Jeremiah did in 410, ah, Lord Yahweh, surely you have completely tricked. The word means to beguile this people and Jerusalem by saying, you will have peace, when a sword is actually in their throat. It sounds like Yahweh had inspired the false prophets. Later, because Yahweh was so slow in carrying out his threatened judgments, Jeremiah lamented that he himself was the victim of divine deception. Oh, Yahweh, you have deceived me, and I have been deceived. You have laid hold on me and overpowered me. But of course, we find the most famous biblical incident of divine deception in 1 Kings 22. When Ahab's false prophets predicted that in his and Jehoshaphat's impending battle with the Arameans they would be victorious, they summoned an authentic prophet of Yahweh, Micaiah ben Imlah. But Ahab was shocked when Micaiah proclaimed a message virtually identical to the message of the prophets of Baal, which he interpreted to mean, go up and triumph, Yahweh has given it, Ramoth Gilead, a city that they were trying to take back, into your hands. Responding to Ahab's expressed doubts about Micaiah's sincerity, this true prophet Micaiah described a vision of Yahweh and his heavenly court which involved a telling conversation. I'm fascinated by this passage. Yahweh said to his courtiers, who will deceive Ahab so he will go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead? You know what God wants to happen. Ahab's days are over, his days are numbered. Well, after several proposals from the council, the spirit came forward, haruach, and stood before Yahweh. I will deceive him, he said. How, Yahweh asked. I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets, he replied. Then Yahweh said, you shall indeed deceive him, you shall overpower him, go out and do it, to which Micaiah added his own interpretive comment. Now look, Yahweh has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these prophets of yours. Well, in reality, Yahweh has pronounced a disaster upon you. Well, the common denominator in Jeremiah 20, 7 and 10 and 1 Kings 22, 19 to 23 is the root verb patach, to deceive. In ordinary usage, the word connotes to be open-minded, to be gullible, hence easily enticed. The biblical understanding of being open-minded is actually negative. It means that you're open to any stupid, false, as well as true influence, and you just let it in. It's to be easily enticed. In its pial form, the word is used of persuasion, seduction, deception of gullible persons. We're dealing with gullible people here. But in Micaiah's case, we need to ask where the deception actually happened. Remarkably, it was not in the words uttered by the prophet. There was nothing false about what Micaiah said, and for that matter, about what the Baal prophet said either. God did not lie. Both Micaiah's and the false prophet's prediction turned out to be true, as was often the case in ancient pagan prophecy. In the Hebrew, their prediction was cryptic and ambiguous. Literally, go up, for Yahweh has given, into the hands of the king. That's what the Baal prophets had said, and that's what Micaiah said. Well, Ahab could have interpreted this statement several ways. He interpreted it to mean, go up, for the Lord has given Ramoth, Gilead, into your Ahab's hands. You're the king. But that's not what the text says. That's what he heard. It's not what it says. The false prophets and Micaiah left out the object. Yahweh has given. There's a blank. It doesn't say the city into your hands. He neither identified the king into whose hands something was given, nor did he identify that which would be given. As it turned out, Yahweh's intended meaning, go up, for Yahweh has given you into the hands of the king of Aram, the Syrian king, the Aramean king. Well, he interpreted it the way he wanted. The deception happened in Ahab's ears, not in the prophets' mouths. There was nothing false about their prophecy. It was vague. It was ambiguous. It could be interpreted in one of two ways. He interpreted it the wrong way. Ezekiel 49 presents a slightly different case, for here Yahweh answered insincerity with insincerity. David had given voice to this version of poetic justice in 2 Samuel 22, 26 to 27. With the faithful, you show yourself faithful, and with the blameless, you show yourself blameless. With the pure, you show yourself pure, but with the crooked, you show yourself perverse. See what's happening? Perhaps these involve cases of, as we read in Proverbs 26, 4, don't answer a fool according to his folly, but in the very next verse, verse 5, answer a fool according to his folly. Disingenuous and unrepentant kings and unrepentant people who seek confirmation of their perverse ways and who clamor for reassurances of well-being do not deserve a straight answer, unlike the innocently ignorant or naive person. A false message of peace in critical circumstances challenges hearers to test the prophetic spirit, but it also sets up everyone, prophet and layperson alike, for the impending disaster. By giving the people lying prophets who proclaimed to the people exactly what they wanted to hear, Yahweh ensured their judgment. In verses 9b to 10, Ezekiel emphasizes the correspondence between the fates of the misguided prophets and the perverse inquirers in two ways. They have the same fate. First, the sentence for the false prophets echoed the three-part punishment of the inquirers in verse 8, I will stretch out my hand against him and destroy him from the midst of my people, Israel. Second, returning to the sacral legal formulation of Leviticus, in verse 10, Ezekiel declared explicitly that both the inquirer and the prophet inquired would bear their own punishment, literally translated, like the punishment of the inquirer, like the punishment of the prophet it will be. That meant that prophets could not claim special favor by virtue of their supposedly professional status, but nor may inquirers on account of their lay status. They're all part of the same corrupt system and they must all fall together. In verse 11, the true prophet not only declared Yahweh's purpose in his judgment, that is Ezekiel, but he also offered a splendid ray of hope for the future. It is true that Yahweh must deal harshly with his people, Ezekiel's fellow exiles, but his goals are redemptive. He made his point with two negative statements and one positive declaration. First, Yahweh desired a people who would never stray from him again. The word ta'ah derives from a realm of animal husbandry. It describes an ox or a sheep that has wandered off and has lost its way. Ethically, it meant to abandon the prescribed covenantal path, walking in the ways of the Lord, especially with reference to idolatry, being seduced off track by the droppings of cattle who have walked ahead of you. Second, Yahweh desired a nation that was cleansed from all its rebellious acts. These included not only the idolatry and the bloodshed that polluted them and the land, but also the general disregard for the distinct distinction between the sacred and the profane. Third, Yahweh would renew the covenant bond. The covenant formula with which this oracle concluded offers the brightest ray of hope. Then they will be my people, and I will be their God. This meant reversing the rupture between deity and nation that Israel's sin had caused and had been completed by her judgment. The nation in exile will become the people of God. Once again, there is hope at the end, a light at the end of this tunnel. With the closing signatory formula, Yahweh placed his imprimatur on the entire oracle as delivered by Ezekiel, the declaration of the Lord Yahweh. The disaster was imminent and would not be revoked, but the future restoration of that nation was equally secure. But that's a future matter. Well, although our circumstances today differ significantly from those of Ezekiel and his fellow exiles, this passage highlights several issues that are relevant for God's people in any era and any part of the world. First, idolatry is essentially a matter of the mind and the heart. Almost 500 years ago, John Calvin talked about human nature as a perpetual factory of idols. In this text, Yahweh's complaint was not so much with concrete images that compete with his own person for the allegiance of his people as with spiritual idolatry, misplaced internal commitments. These may be as provocative of divine wrath and as ruinous to the idolater as the overt practice of idolatry. Tim Keller rightly declared that an idol is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give. An idol is whatever you look at and say, and in your heart of hearts you say, if I'll have that, then I'll feel my life has meaning, then I'll know I have value, then I'll feel significant and secure. That's an idol. Second, the temptation of syncretism, worshiping God while worshiping others and trying to put these two together, this poses a threat to God's people in every age. Ezekiel's countrymen offer a classic example of people hopping between two opinions. That comes from 1 Kings 18.21. Externally, their inquiry before the prophet appeared orthodox and commendable. It's a good thing to seek a word from God. But internally, their spiritual commitments were pagan. Like the ancients of Israel, we too may be able to camouflage our hypocrisy before humans, acting like everyone else and pursuing our own idols. And then on Sunday, we come to worship, declaring with great enthusiasm, I love you, Lord, and I lift my voice. Really? Such hypocrisy will not escape the scrutiny of God. Third, even if the Lord invites all to come to him and knock and seek and ask, he is under no obligation to respond to everyone who approaches him. To receive a favorable answer from the divine King, one must come with sincerity on his terms, among which is his exclusive right to one's devotion. God will tolerate no rivals, nor will he permit himself to be reduced to a sorcerer's agent, disclosing future events and solving the problems of all who appeal for his aid. Fourth, so-called prophets of the Lord, who acquiesce before the flattery and seductions of hypocritical inquirers, become accomplices in the inquirer's crimes and may expect the same punishment. Positions of privilege do not bring immunity from prosecution. They impose even greater accountability before the divine Lord and judge. The prophet's task is to announce the truth and to call people to repentance for their sin, not to satisfy their lusts with false assurances of peace. True prophets are not known by the popularity of their pronouncements, but by the divine authority of their message. And there's a great difference. That's of true prophets. Fifth, the Lord remains gracious and merciful to all who repent of their sin. While warnings of imminent judgment may be interpreted as veiled signs of divine mercy, God's appeals to repentance offer specific hope of finding a sensitive ear with him, he will. But the cry for mercy must be combined with a commitment to a new way of life. If Jonah's announcement of judgment upon Nineveh, 40 days and it's over, if that announcement opened the possibility of escape, and it did, how much more God's invitation to his own people. Six, the Lord is never capricious in his judgment. His responses to human sin are consistent with his immutable character and have as their goal, the transformation of sinful human beings into a covenant people, pure and exclusive in their devotion to him.