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Ezekiel 13: What the Passage Says

100 claims across 23 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Ezekiel 13 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD tells Ezekiel to speak against the prophets of Israel who prophesy out of their own minds, claiming a message from the LORD that he never gave. They tell the people there is peace when there is none, like men coating a flimsy wall with whitewash; God says a storm will bring the wall down and destroy them with it. Ezekiel is then told to speak against women who prophesy for pay and use charms and veils to trap people. God says he will tear away their charms, free his people, and end their false visions.

Claim by Claim

  1. 13:1
    • The word of the LORD came to Ezekiel.
    • The word came saying, that is, introducing speech.
  2. 13:2
    • The LORD addressed the recipient as son of man.
    • The LORD commanded him to prophesy against the prophets of Israel who are prophesying.
    • The LORD commanded him to speak to those who prophesy out of their own hearts.
    • He was to tell them to hear the word of the LORD.
  3. 13:3
    • The Lord GOD speaks the following.
    • Woe is pronounced on the foolish prophets.
    • Those prophets follow their own spirit.
    • Those prophets have seen nothing.
  4. 13:4
    • Israel's prophets are like foxes among ruins.
    • Israel is addressed directly.
  5. 13:5
    • They have not gone up into the breaches.
    • They have not built up a wall for the house of Israel.
    • The purpose of such a wall would be to stand in the battle in the day of the LORD.
  6. 13:6
    • They have seen emptiness.
    • They have seen lying divination.
    • They say, The LORD declares.
    • The LORD has not sent them.
    • They wait for the word to be fulfilled.
  7. 13:7
    • It is asked whether they have not seen an empty vision.
    • It is asked whether they have not spoken a lying divination.
    • They say, The LORD declares.
    • The LORD says he has not spoken.
  8. 13:8
    • The Lord GOD speaks the following.
    • The reason given is that they have spoken emptiness.
    • The reason given is that they have seen lies.
    • Therefore the LORD is against them.
    • This is the declaration of the Lord GOD.
  9. 13:9
    • The LORD's hand will be against the prophets who see emptiness and divine lies.
    • They will not be in the council of the LORD's people.
    • They will not be written in the register of the house of Israel.
    • They will not enter the land of Israel.
    • Then they will know that he is the Lord GOD.
  10. 13:10
    • They have led the LORD's people astray.
    • They said, Peace.
    • There was no peace.
    • Someone builds a flimsy wall.
    • They coat that wall with whitewash.
  11. 13:11
    • Ezekiel is to speak to those who coat the wall with whitewash.
    • He is to say the wall will fall.
    • There will be a flooding downpour.
    • Hailstones are addressed and told they will fall.
    • A stormy wind will break out.
  12. 13:12
    • The wall will fall.
    • It is asked whether they will not then be asked where the coating they applied is.
  13. 13:13
    • The Lord GOD speaks the following.
    • The LORD will break out a stormy wind in his fury.
    • There will be a flooding downpour in his anger.
    • There will be hailstones in wrath to make an end.
  14. 13:14
    • The LORD will tear down the wall they coated with whitewash.
    • He will bring it down to the ground.
    • Its foundation will be exposed.
    • It will fall.
    • They will be consumed in the midst of it.
    • Then they will know that he is the LORD.
  15. 13:15
    • The LORD will spend his wrath on the wall.
    • The LORD will spend his wrath on those who coated it with whitewash.
    • He will say to them that the wall is no more.
    • He will say those who coated it are no more.
  16. 13:16
    • Those referred to are the prophets of Israel who prophesy concerning Jerusalem.
    • They see visions of peace for her.
    • There is no peace.
    • This is the declaration of the Lord GOD.
  17. 13:17
    • Ezekiel is addressed as son of man.
    • He is told to set his face against the daughters of his people.
    • Those women prophesy out of their own hearts.
    • He is told to prophesy against them.
  18. 13:18
    • Ezekiel is to speak what the Lord GOD says.
    • Woe is pronounced on the women who sew bands on all the joints of the hands.
    • The text is ambiguous as to whether the hands are the women's own, their victims', or the LORD's.
    • They make head coverings for heads of every height.
    • The purpose is to hunt souls.
    • It is asked whether they will hunt the souls of the LORD's people.
    • It is asked whether they will keep souls alive for themselves.
  19. 13:19
    • They have profaned the LORD among his people.
    • They did so for handfuls of barley and pieces of bread.
    • They kill souls that should not die.
    • They keep alive souls that should not live.
    • They do this by lying to the LORD's people.
    • The people listen to lies.
  20. 13:20
    • The Lord GOD speaks the following.
    • The LORD is against their bands.
    • With those bands they hunt souls.
    • The souls are hunted like birds.
    • The LORD will tear the bands from their arms.
    • The LORD will let the souls go free.
  21. 13:21
    • The LORD will tear off their head coverings.
    • The LORD will deliver his people out of their hand.
    • The people will no longer be in their hand as prey.
    • Then they will know that he is the LORD.
  22. 13:22
    • They have grieved the heart of the righteous with lies.
    • The LORD has not grieved the righteous.
    • They have strengthened the hands of the wicked.
    • The result is that the wicked does not turn from his evil way.
    • They promise the wicked life.
  23. 13:23
    • Therefore they will no longer see emptiness.
    • They will no longer practice divination.
    • The LORD will deliver his people out of their hand.
    • Then they will know that he is the LORD.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

13:1
"LORD" printed in capital letters stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew consonants usually written YHWH, which readers of the Hebrew text did not pronounce aloud. Where the text has both words together, older English versions print "Lord GOD": the first word is the ordinary Hebrew word for "master," the second is that name again.
13:2
"Son of man" is simply Hebrew for "human being" or "mortal." It is how God addresses Ezekiel throughout the book, over ninety times, and functions almost as a form of address, like calling someone "man" or "mortal one."
13:3
"Woe" translates a Hebrew cry that belonged to funerals. Announcing "woe" over someone living was a way of speaking of them as already dead, so it is closer to a death sentence read aloud than to "how sad for them."
13:4
The word covers both foxes and jackals. The point of the comparison lies in the animal's habits: it scavenges, digs holes, and makes its home in collapsed rubble rather than building or guarding anything.
13:5
Ancient cities were defended by a city wall; when a section crumbled or was battered open, defenders had to physically stand in the breach and stack the stones back up. The image is of men who did not show up to do repair work. "The day of the LORD" was a fixed phrase in Israel's prophets for a coming day of decisive judgment and reckoning, pictured as a battle.
13:6
Divination means trying to obtain hidden or future knowledge by set techniques, casting lots, reading omens, inspecting the liver of a sacrificed animal, interpreting dreams. It was a normal profession across the ancient Near East. The charge here is not the technique itself but that these people attach God's name to their results.
13:9
"The council" is the body of people who sit together to decide things, an inner circle of leaders and advisers, not a religious congregation. "The record of the house of Israel" is a register: an official list of citizens with their family lines, used to establish who belonged to the nation and had rights to land in it. To be struck from it was to lose legal standing as an Israelite.
13:10
The Hebrew word translated "peace" (shalom) is broader than the English word: it means safety, health, prosperity, everything being intact. The message these prophets gave was, in effect, "all is well, nothing will happen." Ordinary walls in the region were built of sun-dried mud brick and then coated with a lime or plaster wash. The coating made a shoddy wall look finished and solid, but it added no strength at all. The older English phrase "untempered morter" means plaster mixed wrong, without straw or proper binding.
13:11
This is not only a picture of divine anger; it is what actually destroyed such walls. Sun-dried mud brick had no resistance to prolonged soaking, and a badly built wall under heavy rain and wind simply slumped and dissolved, whitewash and all.
13:14
"Discovered" in 1611 English means uncovered or laid bare, with no sense of finding something out. A building's foundation was never meant to be seen; exposing it means the demolition went past the wall to the footings, leaving nothing to rebuild on.
13:16
This fixes the target. Ezekiel was writing among Judean deportees in Babylon in the years before Jerusalem fell to the Babylonian army in 586 BC, while prophets back in the city were still announcing that it would hold. The book of Jeremiah records the same argument from inside Jerusalem.
13:17
"Set your face toward" is a Hebrew gesture-phrase meaning to face someone squarely as an opponent, the posture of delivering a hostile message. "The daughters of your people" means the women of your nation.
13:18
The Hebrew of this verse is obscure and translators do not agree on the details. The two objects appear to be bands or pads bound onto the wrists or forearms, and some kind of head covering or veil, made in different lengths to fit the client, the phrase is literally "for heads of every stature." Both seem to be ritual equipment used in a magical practice, possibly placed on the client rather than worn by the practitioner. Nothing else in the Bible describes it, so it cannot be reconstructed with confidence. The word rendered "lives" is nephesh, which means a living person, a life, a self. Older English translated it "souls," which now suggests something separate from the body; the Hebrew does not. "Hunting lives" is the vocabulary of a trapper taking game.
13:19
This names the fee. A handful of barley (the cheapest grain, ordinarily animal feed or poor people's food) and a few pieces of bread were the going rate for a consultation. The phrase measures how little was being charged for what the passage says was being sold. "Treated me as worthless" translates a word meaning to profane or make common: to take something set apart and drag it down to the level of ordinary things.
13:20
The imagery is that of a fowler, who caught birds in nets and snares and kept them alive. The Hebrew phrase behind "to make them fly" is uncertain: it may mean the trapped lives are made to fly away when released, or it may be a technical term from bird-catching whose sense is lost. The verse pictures God cutting the nets and letting the catch go.
13:22
"Strengthen the hands of" is a standard Hebrew idiom for encouraging someone or backing them up, with no sense of physical strength. "Righteous" and "wicked" are not personality labels here but legal-sounding categories: the person in the right and the person in the wrong. The charge is that the verdicts were handed out backwards, leaving honest people crushed and the guilty confident enough to keep going.

Read Ezekiel 13