Ezekiel 13:2-3 - Exposition

Son of man, prophesy, etc. The sin of the men whom Ezekiel denounced was that they prophesied out of their own hearts ( Jeremiah 14:14 ; Jeremiah 23:16 , Jeremiah 23:26 ), and followed their own spirit instead of the Spirit of Jehovah. All was human and of the earth. Not a single fact in the future, not a single eternal law governing both the future and the past, was brought to light by it. To one who was conscious that he had a message which he had not devised himself, and which he had not been taught by men ( Galatians 1:12 ); that he had no selfish by-ends in what he said and did; that he was risking peace, reputation, life itself, for the truth revealed to him,—nothing could be more repulsive than this claim to have seen a vision of Jehovah, by men who bad in reality seen nothing . For foolish prophets, read, with the stronger Hebrew, the prophets, the fools, the words deriving their force from a kind of paronomasia of alliteration. The nabiim are also the n'balim.