Ezekiel 13:17

"And thou, son of man, set thy face against the daughters of my people, that prophesy out of their own heart; and prophesy thou against them, and say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: woe to the women that sew pillows upon all elbows, and make kerchiefs for the head of persons of every stature to hunt souls! Will ye hunt the souls of my people, and save souls alive for yourselves? And ye have profaned me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, to slay the souls that should not die, and to save the souls alive that should not live, by your lying to my people that hearken unto lies."

PROPHECIES AGAINST THE FALSE PROPHETESSES

A number of prophetesses are mentioned in the Bible: Miriam in Exodus 15:20; Deborah, Judges 4:4; Huldah, 2 Kings 22:14; Noadiah, Nehemiah 6:14; Elizabeth, Luke 1:41-45, Anna, Luke 2:36-38, the four virgin daughters of Philip, Acts 21:9, and Jezebel, Revelation 21:20. Isaiah's wife is also called "a prophetess" (Isaiah 8:3); but in her case, the title is usually construed as meaning merely, "the prophet's wife."

The evil prophetesses mentioned here were a strange lot indeed, and Cooke stated that, "Prophetesses is too good a word for them; witches or sorceresses would suit the description better."[9] "These people were the ancient forerunners of the palmists, phrenologists, madams, fortune-tellers, card readers, and crystal ball watchers that ply their nefarious trade today in every large city on earth."[10]

It is not known exactly what is meant by the pillows and kerchief's mentioned here; but whatever they were, Bruce stated: "They evidently belonged to the paraphernalia of witchcraft."[11] "It seems that the kind of witchcraft practiced by these "prophetesses" exercised a certain amount of control over individuals, like one sees in the West Indies in the voodoo cults. It was an art practiced solely from the profit motive (Ezekiel 13:19)."[12] Of course, the connecting of the holy name of the Lord Jehovah with such a crooked and shameful art was a profanation indeed.

"They did it for poor gain. If they could get no more for it, rather than refuse, they would sell you a false prophecy that would please you for the beggar's dole, a handful of barley, or a piece of bread."[13]

The meaning of this paragraph is somewhat obscure, but Cooke said that, as rendered, "The passage describes the malicious, self-interested designs of these women, who victimized others by means of Witchcraft, and make a living by it for themselves."[14]

As Leal noted, "Ignorance of exactly what those women were doing derives from the fact that a number of expressions used in this chapter are used nowhere else in the Bible."[15]

Although Feinberg rejected the idea, he reported that some have suggested these women could also have engaged in harlotry and licentiousness, a suggestion that we accept as reasonable enough. After all, the New Testament prophetess, Jezebel, "Taught God's servants to commit fornication, seducing them into this sin" (Revelation 2:20); and the ambiguity of our passage here in Ezekiel makes us very reluctant to rule out this same possibility in the evil prophetesses mentioned here.

"To slay souls that should not die ..." (Ezekiel 13:19). This reference to the ability of those false prophetesses to "slay" or keep alive persons as their pleasure dictated cannot be a reference to what any of them could really do, but a sarcastic reference to what those evil women "claimed" they could do!