Ezekiel 13:3

Ezekiel 13:3

Woe to Foolish Prophets

1 And the word of the Lord came to me, saying,

2 “Son of man, prophesy ^aagainst the prophets of Israel who prophesy, and say to ^bthose who prophesy out of their own ^cheart, ‘Hear the word of the Lord!’ ”

3 Thus says the Lord God: “Woe to the foolish prophets, who follow their own spirit and have seen¹ nothing!

4 O Israel, your prophets are ^alike foxes in the deserts.

5 You ^ahave not gone up into the gaps to build a wall for the house of Israel to stand in battle on the day of the Lord.

6 ^aThey have envisioned futility and false divination, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord!’ But the Lord has ^bnot sent them; yet they hope that the word may¹ be confirmed.

7 Have you not seen a futile vision, and have you not spoken false divination? You say, ‘The Lord says,’ but I have not spoken.”

8 Therefore thus says the Lord God: “Because you have spoken nonsense and envisioned lies, therefore I am indeed against you,” says the Lord God.

9 “My hand will be ^aagainst the prophets who envision futility and who ^bdivine lies; they shall not be in the assembly of My people, ^cnor be written in the record of the house of Israel, ^dnor shall they enter into the land of Israel. ^eThen you shall know that I am the Lord God.

10 “Because, indeed, because they have seduced My people, saying, ^a‘Peace!’ when there is no peace—and one builds a wall, and they ^bplaster it with untempered mortar—

11 say to those who plaster it with untempered mortar, that it will fall. ^aThere will be flooding rain, and you, O great hailstones, shall fall; and a stormy wind shall tear it down.

12 Surely, when the wall has fallen, will it not be said to you, ‘Where is the mortar with which you plastered it?’ ”

Commentaries:

Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown

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foolish—though vaunting as though exclusively possessing "wisdom" (I Corinthians 1:19-21); the fear of God being the only beginning of wisdom (Psalms 111:10).

their own spirit—instead of the Spirit of God. A threefold distinction lay between the false and the true prophets: (1) The source of their messages respectively; of the false, "their own hearts"; of the true, an object presented to the spiritual sense (named from the noblest of the senses, a seeing) by the Spirit of God as from without, not produced by their own natural powers of reflection. The word, the body of the thought, presented itself not audibly to the natural sense, but directly to the spirit of the prophet; and so the perception of it is properly called a seeing, he perceiving that which thereafter forms itself in his soul as the cover of the external word [DELITZSCH]; hence the peculiar expression, "seeing the word of God" (Isaiah 2:1; Isaiah 13:1; Amos 1:1; Micah 1:1). (2) The point aimed at; the false "walking after their own spirit"; the true, after the Spirit of God. (3) The result; the false saw nothing, but spake as if they had seen; the true had a vision, not subjective, but objectively real [FAIRBAIRN]. A refutation of those who set the inward word above the objective, and represent the Bible as flowing subjectively from the inner light of its writers, not from the revelation of the Holy Ghost from without. "They are impatient to get possession of the kernel without its fostering shell—they would have Christ without the Bible" [BENGEL].

**Other Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown entries containing Ezekiel 13:3:**

Hosea 9:7
Micah 2:11
Matthew 7:15

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