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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Ezekiel 22:23 - 22:23
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The corrupt state of all classes in the kingdom is the immediate cause of its destruction. - Eze 22:23. And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, Eze 22:24. Son of man, say to it, Thou art a land which is not shined upon, nor rained upon in the day of anger. Eze 22:25. Conspiracy of its prophets is within it; like a roaring lion, which rends in pieces the prey, they devour souls, take possessions and money; they multiply its widows within it. Eze 22:26. Its priests violate my law and profane my holy things; they make no distinction between holy and unholy, and do not teach the difference between clean and unclean, and they hide their eyes from my Sabbaths, and I am profaned among them. Eze 22:27. Its princes in the midst of it are like wolves, which rend prey in pieces, that they may shed blood, destroy souls, to acquire gain. Eze 22:28. And its prophets plaster it with cement, seeing what is worthless, and diving lies for them, saying, “Thus saith the Lord Jehovah,” when Jehovah hath not spoken. Eze 22:29. The common people offer violence and commit theft; they crush the wretched and the poor, and oppress the foreigner against right. Eze 22:30. I seek among them for a man who might build a wall and step into the breach before me on behalf of the land, that I might not destroy it, but I find none. Eze 22:31. Therefore I pour out my anger upon them; I destroy them in the fire of my wrath, I give their way upon their head, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. - To show the necessity for the predicted judgment still more clearly, in the third word of God contained in this chapter a description is given of the spread of deep corruption among all classes of the people, and the impossibility of saving the kingdom is plainly shown. The words אֱמָר־לָהּ, “say unto her,” are taken by most of the commentators as referring to Jerusalem, the abominations of which the prophet is commanded to declare. But although the clause, “thou art a land,” etc. (Eze 22:24), could unquestionably be made to harmonize with this, yet the words of Eze 22:30, “I sought for a man who might stand in the gap before Jehovah for the land,” indicate most unquestionably that this word of God is directed against the land of Judah, and consequently לָהּ must be taken as referring to אֶרֶץ which follows, the pronoun is this case being placed before the noun to which it refers, as in Num 24:17. Any allusion to the city of Jerusalem would therefore be somewhat out of place, inasmuch as in the preceding word of God the object referred to was not the city, but the house of Israel, or the nation generally, from which a transition is here made to the land, or the kingdom of Judah. The meaning of Eze 22:24 is a disputed question. לֹא מְטֹהָרָה הִיא, which is rendered ἡ οὐ βρεχομένηin the Sept., is taken by most of the expositors to mean, “it is not cleansed,” the form מְטֹהָרָה being correctly rendered as a participle Pual of טָהַר. But this rendering does not furnish any appropriate sense, unless the following words לֹא גֻּשְׁמָהּ are taken as a threat: there shall not be rain, or it shall not be rained upon in the day of wrath. But this view is hardly reconcilable with the form of the word. גֻּשְׁמָהּ, according to the Masoretic pointing with Mappik in the ה, is evidently meant to be taken as a noun גֹּשֶׁם = גֶּשֶׁם. In that case, if the words were intended to contain a threat, יִהְיֶה ought not to be omitted. But without a verb the words contain a statement in harmony with what precedes. We regard the Chetib גשׁמה as the perfect Pual גֻּשְׁמָהּ. And let it not be objected to this that the Pual of this verb is not met with elsewhere, for the form of the noun גֹּשֶׁם with the u sound does not occur anywhere else. As a perfect Pual, לֹא גֻּשְׁמָהּ is a simple continuation of the participial clause לֹא מְטֹהָרָה הִיא, containing like this an affirmation, and cannot possibly be taken as a threat or prediction. But “not cleansed” and “not rained upon” do not agree together, as rain is not a means of purification according to the Hebrew idea. It is true that in the law the withdrawal or suspension of rain is threatened as a punishment from God, and the pouring out of rain is promised as a theocratical blessing. But even if the words are taken in a tropical sense, as denoting a withdrawal of the blessings of divine grace, they will not harmonize with the other clause, “not cleansed.” We therefore take מְטֹהָרָה in the sense of “shined upon by the light,” or provided with brightness; a meaning which is sustained by Exo 24:10, where tohar occurs in the sense of splendour, and by the kindred word tzohar, light. In this way we obtain the suitable thought, land which has neither sunlight nor rain in the day of wrath, i.e., does not enjoy a single trace of the divine blessing, but is given up to the curse of barrenness.
The reason for this threat is given in Eze 22:25., where a picture is drawn of the moral corruption of all ranks; viz., of the prophets (Eze 22:25), the priests (Eze 22:26), the princes (Eze 22:27), and the common people (Eze 22:29). There is something very striking in the allusion to the prophets in Eze 22:25, not so much because they are mentioned again in Eze 22:28, - for this may be accounted for on the ground that in the latter passage they are simply introduced as false advisers of the princes, - as on account of the statement made concerning them in Eze 22:25, namely, that, like lions tearing their prey, they devour souls, etc.; a description which is not given either in Ezekiel 13 or elsewhere. Hitzig therefore proposes to alter נְבִיאֶיהָ into נְשִׂיאֶיהָ, after the rendering ἀφηγούμενοι given by the lxx. This alteration of the text, which confines itself to a single letter, is rendered very plausible by the fact that almost the same is affirmed of the persons mentioned in Eze 22:25 as of the princes in Eze 22:27, and that in the passage in Zephaniah (Zep 3:3-4), which is so similar to the one before us, that Ezekiel appears to have had it in his mind, the princes (שָׂרֶיהָ) and the judges (שֹׁפְטֶיהָ) are called the prophets and the priests. The נְשִׂיאִים here would correspond to the שָׂרִים of Zephaniah, and the שָׂרִים to the שֹׁפְטִים. According to Eze 22:6, the נְשִׂיאִים would indicate primarily the members of the royal family, possibly including the chief officers of the crown; and the שָׂרִים eht dna ;n (Eze 22:27) would be the heads of tribes, of families, and of fathers' houses, in whose hands the national administration of justice principally lay (cf. Exo 18:19.; Deu 1:13-18; and my Bibl. Archäol. ii. §149). I therefore prefer this conjecture, or correction, to the Masoretic reading, although the latter is supported by ancient witnesses, such as the Chaldee with its rendering סַפְרָהָא, scribes, and the version of Jerome. For the statement which the verse contains is not applicable to prophets, and the best explanation given of the Masoretic text - namely, that by Michaelis, “they have made a compact with one another as to what kind of teaching they would or would not give; and in order that their authority may continue undisturbed, they persecute even to blood those who do not act with them, or obey them, but rather contradict” - does not do justice to the words, but weakens their sense. קֶשֶׁר is not a predicate to 'נב, “they are (i.e., form) a conspiracy;” but 'נב is a genitive. At the same time, there is no necessity to take קֶשֶׁר in the sense of “company,” a rendering which cannot be sustained. The fact that in what follows, where the comparison to lions is introduced, the נביאים (נשׂיאים) are the subject, simply proves that in the first clause also these men actually form the prominent idea. There is no ground for supplying הֵמָּה to 'כַּאֲרִי (they are like, etc.); but the simile is to be linked on to the following clause. נֶפֶשׁ אָכָלוּ is to be explained from the comparison to a lion, which devours the prey that it has captured in its blood, in which is the soul, or nephesh (Gen 9:4; Lev 17:11.). The thought is this: in their insatiable greed for riches they sacrifice men and put them to death, and thereby multiply the number of victims (for the fact, see Eze 19:5, Eze 19:7). What is stated in Eze 22:26 concerning the priests is simply a further expansion of Zep 3:4, where the first two clauses occur word for word; for קֹדֶשׁ in Zephaniah is really equivalent to קָדָשַׁי, holy things and deeds. The desecration of the holy things consisted in the fact that they made no distinction between sacred and profane, clean and unclean. For the fact, compare Lev 10:10-11. Their covering their eyes from the Sabbaths showed itself in their permitting the Sabbaths to be desecrated by the people, without offering any opposition (cf. Jer 17:27).
The comparison of the rulers (sārim) to ravening wolves is taken from Zep 3:3. Destroying souls to acquire gain is perfectly applicable to unjust judges, inasmuch as, according to Exo 18:21, the judges were to hate בֶּצַע. All that is affirmed in Eze 22:28 of the conduct of the false prophets is repeated for the most part verbatim from Eze 13:10,Eze 13:9, and Eze 13:7. By לָהֶם, which points back to the three classes of men already mentioned, and not merely to the sārim, the prophets are represented as helpers of those who support the ungodly in their wicked ways, by oracles which assured them of prosperity. עַם (Eze 22:29), as distinguished from the spiritual and secular rulers of the nation, signifies the common people. With reference to their sins and wickednesses, see Eze 18:7, Eze 18:12, Eze 18:18; and for the command against oppressing the poor and foreigners, compare Exo 22:20-21; Deu 24:17. - The corruption is so universal, that not a man is to be found who could enter into the gap as a righteous man, or avert the judgment of destruction by his intercession. מֵהֶם refers not merely to the prophets, who did not enter into the gap according to Eze 13:5, but to all the classes previously mentioned. At the same time, it does not follow from this, that entering into the gap by means of intercession cannot be the thing intended, as Hitzig supposes. The expression לְפָנַי בְּעַד הָאָרֶץ clearly refers to intercession. This is apparent from the simple fact that, as Hitzig himself observes, the intercession of Abraham for Sodom (Gen 18:13.) was floating before the mind of Ezekiel, since the concluding words of the verse contain an obvious allusion to Gen 18:28. Because the Lord does not find a single righteous man, who might intercede for the land, He pours out His anger upon it, to destroy the inhabitants thereof. With reference to the fact and the separate words employed, compare Ezekiel 21:36; Eze 7:4; Eze 9:10; Eze 11:21, and Eze 16:43. It does not follow from the word וָאֶשְׁפֹּךְ, that Ezekiel “is speaking after the catastrophe” (Hitzig). For although וָאֶשְׁפֹּךְ expresses the consequence of Jehovah's seeking a righteous man and not finding one, it by no means follows from the occurrence of the preterite וְלֹא מָצָאתִי that וָאֶשְׁפֹּךְ is also a preterite. וָאֶשְׁפֹּךְ is simply connected with וָאֲבַקֵּשׁ as a consequence; and in both verbs the Vav consec. expresses the sequence of thought, and not of time. The seeking, therefore, with the result of not having found, cannot be understood in a chronological sense, i.e., as an event belonging to the past, for the simple reason that the preceding words do not record the chronological order of events. It merely depicts the existing moral condition of the people, and Eze 22:30 sums up the result of the description in the thought that there was no one to be found who could enter in the gap before God. Consequently we cannot determine from the imperfect with Vav consec. either the time of the seeking and not finding, or that of the pouring out of the wrath.