Ezekiel 14:7

"For every one of the house of Israel, as of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that separateth himself from me, and taketh his idols into his heart, and putteth the stumblingblock of his iniquity before his face, and cometh to the prophet, to inquire for himself of me; I Jehovah will answer him by myself; and I will set my face against that man, and will make him an astonishment, for a sign and a proverb, and I will cut him off from the midst of my people; and ye shall know that I am Jehovah. And if the prophet be deceived and speak a word, I, Jehovah, have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand upon him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people."

"That separateth himself from me ..." (Ezekiel 14:7). No double minded person can be right in God's sight. The secret love and adoration of idols cut every guilty soul completely off from God. This sin, whether committed by the racial stock of Israel, by sojourners living in Israel under God's protection, was fatal to any satisfactory relationship with God.

"I will answer him by myself ..." (Ezekiel 14:7). This meant that God would answer, not through the words of any true prophet, but by the summary execution of terrible penalties upon the idolater.

"I will set my face against that man ..." (Ezekiel 14:8). Here is spelled out the penalty: (1) spiritual death, (2) being cut off from God's people, and (3) the experiencing of some terrible earthly calamity, of the type that would get public attention and make the victim an astonishment and a proverb. Two examples of this in the New Testament are the sudden death of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:5-11) and the stroke that took away Herod Agrippa II at Caesarea (Acts 12). Nothing could be more terrible for any mortal than the fact of God having set his face against that man.

"I have deceived that prophet ..." (Ezekiel 14:9). As Cooke noted, "A statement like this is not intelligible unless we take into consideration the thought patterns of oriental mind."[7] We have the same pattern in the thinking of believers even today. When a loved one is lost, we have all heard it said that, "The Lord has called him home." This merely by-passes secondary and subordinate causes and attributes all that happens to the eternal will of God. God's "deceiving a false prophet" here was in no sense an evil act upon God's part. "As a matter of fact the false prophet had brought the deception upon himself"[8] a by his own evil desires and deeds.

What is in view here is God's judicial blinding, hardening, or deception of wicked men. The classical example in the Old Testament is that of Pharaoh. The Lord indeed "hardened Pharaoh's heart"; but that occurred only after the Bible had declared no less than ten times that, "Pharaoh had hardened his own heart." Does the equivalent of such a thing happen today? Most assuredly, it does.

"And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness" (2 Thessalonians 2:11-12 KJV).

It was possible to say of this self-deceived prophet that God had deceived him, because, "The consequences of his sin,. as well as the moral law of God which he violated were God's ordinances, and because the penalty of deception, was according to God's will, therefore his state of deception could quite properly be attributed to God."[9] This line of reasoning, however, suggests no amelioration of the false prophet's guilt. "No man can possibly become a false prophet without criminal blame upon himself."[10]

This passage forbade any true prophet to provide God's Word to idolaters; and, by definition, that meant that any prophet speaking with an idolater was, of course, an evil-doer himself.

It is amazing, as Calvin said, that, "Neither imposters nor frauds take place apart from the will of God." Keil quoted Calvin's remark, and then added that, "This can happen only with persons who have first admitted evil into themselves. Furthermore, the penalty of God's judgment shall fall upon both alike, the deceived prophet, and the idolatrous inquirer."[11]