Ezekiel 22:26 - Exposition

The sins of the prophets are followed by these of the priests. Their guilt was that they blurred over the distinction between the holy and the profane (Revised Version, "common"), between the clean and the unclean (comp. Ezekiel 44:23 ; Le Ezekiel 10:10 , where the same terms are used), in what we have learnt to call the positive and ceremonial ordinances of the Law, and so blunted their keenness of perception in regard to analogous moral distinctions. Extremes meet, and in our Lord's time the same result was brought about by an exaggerated scrupulosity about the very things the neglect of which was, in Ezekiel's time, the root of the evils which he condemns. This was true generally, conspicuously true in the case of the sabbath. Its neglect was a crying evil in Ezekiel's time, just as its exaggeration was in the later development of Judaism. Though in itself positive rather than moral, to hide the eyes from its holiness was, for these to whom the commandment had been given, an act of immorality.