Ezekiel 13 explained: Painting Over a Crumbling Wall

Prophets who make it up (vv. 1-7)

Ezekiel, living among the exiles in Babylon, is told to confront prophets who speak from their own imagination yet claim the LORD sent them. Like jackals prowling in ruins, they look out for themselves instead of repairing the broken wall, which most readers take to mean they never called the people to change course before judgment came.

Shut out of the community (vv. 8-9)

God declares himself against these prophets: they will lose any seat on the people's council and be left off the official records of who belonged to Israel. They will not be among those who enter the land again after exile.

Whitewash on a flimsy wall (vv. 10-16)

By saying "peace" when no peace was coming, the prophets were like workers painting a shaky wall so it looks solid. The storm of rain, hail and wind stands for the coming catastrophe, usually understood as the Babylonian army destroying Jerusalem a few years later, when both the wall and its painters fall.

Women with charms and veils (vv. 17-19)

Ezekiel also condemns women who prophesied from their own minds, using wrist charms and veils that seem to have been magic objects for trapping people, though scholars are unsure how these rituals worked. They did it for handfuls of barley and bread, and God says their lies killed people who should not have died and spared people who should not live, which may mean their pronouncements doomed the innocent and protected the guilty.

Setting the trapped free (vv. 20-23)

God promises to tear away the charms and veils and let people go free, like birds released from a trap. Their lies had discouraged people doing right and reassured people doing wrong, and that will end.

Key verse: Ezekiel 13:10

Something to think about

What makes a reassuring message easier to believe than an uncomfortable one, even when the uncomfortable one turns out to be true?