Ezekiel 22:1-16

Ezekiel 22. The Sins of the Classes and the Masses. The doom which has just been described in such fiercely vivid terms contains only one allusion to the sins which justified it (Ezekiel 21:23 f.). This chapter details those sins, and deals with the present as Ezekiel 22:20 had dealt with the past, incidentally letting us see what Ezekiel means by sin.

Ezekiel 22:1. The Sin. The evils denounced are largely social wrongs (cf. ch. 18), but it is significant that the low morality is traced to false religion idolatry (Ezekiel 22:3 f.) and forgetfulness of God (Ezekiel 22:12), cruelty, oppression of the poor and defenceless, immorality, abnormality in the marriage relationship, rapacity these moral wrongs are associated here, as in ch. 18, with cultic misdemeanours, e.g. profanation of the Sabbath.

Ezekiel 22:17. The Doom. In the day of doom, now so near, the people from the country will pour for protection into Jerusalem, which, under stress of siege, will become as a furnace in which they shall all be melted by the fierce heat of the Divine anger. No refining process this, for they are all dross, every one, high and low alike.

Ezekiel 22:25. Classes and Masses. The princes (i.e. the court) are equally rapacious, the priests make no distinction between the holy and the common, the officials are rapacious and dishonest, the prophets whitewash defects which they ought to expose (cf. Ezekiel 13:10 ff.). But the common people are as bad as their leaders: they, too, wrong wherever they can. Not a good man among them all to save the city from destruction. (The first seven words of Ezekiel 22:25 should read simply whose princes.)