Ezekiel 13:3

3 This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Woe to the foolish[a] prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing!

Ezekiel 13:3 in Other Translations

KJV
3 Thus saith the Lord GOD; Woe unto the foolish prophets, that follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing!
ESV
3 Thus says the Lord GOD, Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing!
NLT
3 This is what the Sovereign LORD says: What sorrow awaits the false prophets who are following their own imaginations and have seen nothing at all!’
MSG
3 God, the Master, pronounces doom on the empty-headed prophets who do their own thing and know nothing of what's going on!
CSB
3 This is what the Lord God says: Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing.

Ezekiel 13:3 Meaning and Commentary

Ezekiel 13:3

Thus saith the Lord God, woe unto the foolish prophets
The false prophets, as the Targum; who are foolish, as all are who are not sent of God, and furnished by him with wisdom and knowledge, and who prophesy out of their own hearts; for what else but folly can proceed from thence? this must be a great mortification to these prophets to be called foolish, when they reckoned themselves wise men, being vainly puffed up in their fleshly minds, and were accounted so by others; but what is wisdom with men is foolishness with God: that follow their own spirit;
or "walk after it" F3; and not the Spirit of God, who leads into all truth; they pretended to a spirit of prophecy, but it was their own spirit and the dictates of it they followed, and not the Spirit of the Lord; and therefore it is no wonder that they prophesied false things, and led the people wrong; as all such teachers do, who give way to their own fancies and imaginations, and forsake the word of God, and do not implore the assistance and teachings of the blessed Spirit: and have seen nothing;
no vision, as the Syriac version renders it; they pretended to have revelations of things future from the Lord, but they had none; what they saw were vain visions and lying divinations, and were as nothing, and worse than nothing; yea, they said what they never saw.


FOOTNOTES:

F3 (Mxwr rxa Myklh) "qui ambulant post spiritm suum": Pagninus, Calvin, Cocceius, Starckius.

Ezekiel 13:3 In-Context

1 The word of the LORD came to me:
2 “Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who are now prophesying. Say to those who prophesy out of their own imagination: ‘Hear the word of the LORD!
3 This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing!
4 Your prophets, Israel, are like jackals among ruins.
5 You have not gone up to the breaches in the wall to repair it for the people of Israel so that it will stand firm in the battle on the day of the LORD.

Cross References 2

  • 1. S Lamentations 2:14; Hosea 9:7
  • 2. S Jeremiah 23:25-32

Footnotes 1

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