Ezekiel 22:17-26 - The people of Israel have become dross to me

22:17-22

We now come to the second oracle in this triplet, introduced by the words “the word of the Lord came to me”. God tells Ezekiel that the people of Israel had become dross to Him. They were utterly worthless. Jerusalem, far from being a place of safety, would become a furnace for them. They had received, and ignored, the words of various prophets, especially Jeremiah. The words of Jeremiah would be fulfilled and they would that it was indeed the Lord who was pouring out His wrath upon them.

22:23-26

We now come to the final oracle in this chapter. This is addressed to the land. The land suffers, it is a land that has not been cleansed or rained upon “in the day of wrath”. We live in a day where there is much concern for the environment. The Bible has a solution for the well being of the land, but it is not one that would find much favour today. The Biblical solution is for a people to obey the Lord. When we disobey the environment is adversely affected. Rom 8:19-21 tells of the creation waiting for the “children of God to be revealed”. The cause of the affliction on the land in Ezekiel’s day was, amongst other things, her priests doing violence. We may not associate priests with doing violence (though scandals in the Roman Catholic church are a counterexample to this), but in Jesus’ day the priests did violence. They also taught that there is no difference between clean and unclean, and God’s name was profaned. Sadly there are many “Christian” ministers today of whom the same could be said.