Ezekiel 22:28

28 Her prophets plaster with whitewash^[a] for them by seeing false visions and lying divinations, and they say: This is what the Lord God says, when the Lord has not spoken.

Ezekiel 22:28 Meaning and Commentary

Ezekiel 22:28

And her prophets have daubed them with untempered mortar
Palliated their sins, declared it to be right to shed the blood they did; and seize on the estates of men; but this, though it might for a while satisfy the consciences of these princes, and stop the clamours of the people against them; yet would not last long, but be like the building of a wall with bad stuff, which will not stand; and daubing it with mortar, which will soon wash off. So the Targum,

``and the false prophets which are in the midst of her are like to those that build a wall, and daub it with mere clay, without straw;''

(See Gill on Ezekiel 13:10). Seeing vanity, and divining lies unto them;
pretending visions from God, when what they see, or pretend to see, is nothing but vanity and emptiness, mere delusions; and prophesying good things, peace and prosperity, when they are all lies; giving out they have messages from God, and are ordered to foretell that happy times will be, when it is all falsehood: saying, thus saith the Lord God, when the Lord hath not spoken;
herein mimicking the true prophets, who came in the name of the Lord, and usually prefaced their prophecies with a thus saith the Lord; and so did these false prophets, when the Lord said nothing to them, and gave them no commission to speak in his name, or say the things they did.

Ezekiel 22:28 In-Context

26 Her priests do violence to My law and profane My holy things. They make no distinction between the holy and the common, and they do not explain the difference between the clean and the unclean. They disregard My Sabbaths, and I am profaned among them.

27 "Her officials within her are like wolves tearing [their] prey, shedding blood, and destroying lives in order to get unjust gain.

28 Her prophets plaster with whitewash for them by seeing false visions and lying divinations, and they say: This is what the Lord God says, when the Lord has not spoken.

29 The people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery. They have oppressed the poor and needy and unlawfully exploited the foreign resident.

30 I searched for a man among them who would repair the wall and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land so that I might not destroy it, but I found no one.

Footnotes

• [a]. Ezk 13:10-15