Ezekiel 14:10

"And they shall bear their iniquity: the iniquity of the prophet shall be even as the iniquity of him that seeketh unto him; 11 that the house of Israel may go no more astray from me, neither defile themselves any more with all their transgressions; but that they may be my people, and I may be their God, saith the Lord Jehovah."

Ezekiel 14:11 here returns to the grand theme so frequently mentioned in all of the prophets, the glory of God's people, their blessing from God, their righteousness, and their faithfulness in God's work. The great mistake of Israel was their reliance upon such wonderful promises, "as if they were an unalienable possession bestowed upon them unconditionally; nor did they understand that such glorious conditions would be attainable only upon the condition of their loving and obeying God."[12]

The same author noted that, "This verse (Ezekiel 14:11) renews the appeal for repentance given in 5:6, again reminding Israel that the chief purpose of the forthcoming judgments against them was to bring Israel back from her going astray from God, and to cleanse her from the apostasy by which she had become unclean in God's sight and had been cast out of fellowship with Him."[13]

The last section of the chapter refutes the false notion that had developed among the Israelites that God's righteousness would not allow him to destroy Jerusalem completely because of the few righteous people whom they supposed to be living there. Apparently, they had picked up this false idea from Genesis 18:32, where it is recorded that God would have spared Sodom if there could have been found as many as ten righteous people in it.

Of course, Israel was wrong about this on several counts: (1) There were not any righteous people in Jerusalem. (2) Even if there had been, God had made no such promise on behalf of Jerusalem, because Jerusalem was even worse than Sodom and Gomorrah. (3) Even if such eminent heroes of righteousness as Noah, Daniel, and Job were in the Jerusalem of Ezekiel's times, and even if they were interceding for the city, even that could not avert the deserved judgment about to fall upon Jerusalem.