Ezekiel 22:18-22

ISRAEL IN THE ASSYRIAN FURNACE, Ezekiel 22:18-22.

In this new prophecy Israel is compared with the ore in a smelting furnace. This ore looks now perfectly worthless. Once it was good silver ore, but now it is only the “dross” of silver. That some silver is expected as the resultant of the fiery test is hinted here and clearly expressed elsewhere (Ezekiel 22:15; Ezekiel 18:27; compare 1 Peter 1:7). Again and again the purpose of this punishment is declared to be, not the nation’s destruction, but its purification. Yet as the furnace is supposed to be set up “in the midst of Jerusalem” (Ezekiel 22:19), it may be that only the Jerusalemites, who are elsewhere considered as hopelessly unrepentant, are thought of in this connection, and not the remnant purified in the Babylonian fires. (See notes Ezekiel 24:1-14; Ezekiel 9:8; Ezekiel 11:16; Ezekiel 11:21, etc.) For the use of this same figure by other prophets see Malachi 3:2-3; Isaiah 1:22; Jeremiah 6:30.