Ezekiel 14:4

I the Lord will answer him that cometh according to the multitude of his idols.

Answered according to their idols

With them, as froward, the All-seeing will, in the psalmist’s terribly bold phrase, “show Himself froward”; they will incur that penalty which Scripture describes as a blinding of their eyes and a hardening of their heart, and which essentially consists in their being left to themselves without the light which they do not sincerely seek for--left, in fact, to take their own way, and see what will come of it. This line of Biblical language has caused difficulties which cannot be passed over; the more so, because one passage in which it is found (Isaiah 6:10) is of all passages in the Old Testament the one most frequently cited in the New Testament; and St. John, with a startling distinctness, attributes the “blinding” and “hardening” to the Lord. The explanation must be found in that law of ethical life whereby persistency in self-will--the process, as Shakespeare, in an awfully vivid passage, calls it, of “growing hard in viciousness”--does inevitably produce moral insensibility. All serious moralists, whatever be their theological standpoint, will admit this to be a fact; and all who believe in a God will see in it a revelation of His character, so that when it works He is, in fact, allowing it to take its course. And it is the method of Scripture writers to impress the fact on men’s minds with a concrete vividness, by representing such action on God’s part as a literal penal infliction. There, anyhow, stands the fact, and we have to reckon with it. Let us’ also fear, and be on our guard, lest, for lack of the single-eyed purpose which our Lord insists upon in His great sermon, we too should be left in the great darkness which waits like a shadow on hardness of heart. (Canon Bright.)

The blight of the idol

A man’s vision determines what kind of revelation he will accept. It will guide him in the choice of his prophet: “Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their heart, and put the stumbling block of their iniquity before their face: should I be inquired of at all by them?” (Ezekiel 14:3). When an inquirer comes with his idol in his heart, he is not an inquirer, but a claimant; he has brought with him the only answer which he is prepared to entertain: he falls over the stumbling block of his iniquity, and misses the light of the bright and morning star. How that “according to” reverberates through the prophet’s messages! Here it declares that every idol carries with it a lie that will be believed for truth. There is an atmosphere in which the true prophet cannot draw his breath and speak distinctly; the false prophet can and that is the disaster. “Mischief shall come upon mischief, and rumour shall be upon rumour; then shall they seek a vision of the prophet; but the law shall perish from the priest, and counsel from the ancients” (Ezekiel 7:26). when idols flourish, ideals perish. (H. E. Lewis.)