Ezekiel 14:25

Prolonged] RV 'deferred,' and so in Ezekiel 12:28.

(b) False Prophets Reproved (Ezekiel 13:1)

False prophecy accompanied true prophecy in Israel like its shadow. While the true prophets spoke in God's name a message which they had really received from Him, the false prophets used God's name to sanction messages which He had not given them (Ezekiel 12:6), which were merely the product of their own heart and spirit, and not the result of inspired insight (Ezekiel 12:2). These messages were smooth and agreeable (Ezekiel 12:10; Ezekiel 12:17), but they were also vain, false, and seductive (Ezekiel 12:6). They did not deserve the name of prophecy, but were on the same level as heathen divination (Ezekiel 12:6; Ezekiel 12:9). Ezekiel compares the false prophets first to foxes that burrow in ruins and make them more ruinous (Ezekiel 12:4), and next to men who daub with untempered mortar (or whitewash) a slim and tottering wall; the wall symbolising the vain attempts of the people to defend Jerusalem, and the mortar or whitewash the futile encouragement which the false prophets lent to these efforts. Such prophets would be blotted out of Israel (Ezekiel 12:9). The wall would be destroyed by the storm of God's wrath, and the daubers would perish along with it (Ezekiel 12:11).