13:1-9 Where God gives a warrant to do any thing, he gives wisdom. What they delivered was not what they had seen or heard, as that is which the ministers of Christ deliver. They were not praying prophets, had no intercourse with Heaven; they contrived how to please people, not how to do them good; they stood not against sin. They flattered people into vain hopes. Such widen the breach, by causing men to think themselves deserving of eternal life, when the wrath of God abides upon them.

Verses 2, 3. - Son of man, prophesy, etc. The sin of the men whom Ezekiel denounced was that they prophesied out of their own hearts (Jeremiah 14:14; Jeremiah 23:16, 26), and followed their own spirit instead of the Spirit of Jehovah. All was human and of the earth. Not a single fact in the future, not a single eternal law governing both the future and the past, was brought to light by it. To one who was conscious that he had a message which he had not devised himself, and which he had not been taught by men (Galatians 1:12); that he had no selfish by-ends in what he said and did; that he was risking peace, reputation, life itself, for the truth revealed to him, - nothing could be more repulsive than this claim to have seen a vision of Jehovah, by men who bad in reality seen nothing. For foolish prophets, read, with the stronger Hebrew, the prophets, the fools, the words deriving their force from a kind of paronomasia of alliteration. The nabiim are also the n'balim.

Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel,.... Who called themselves so, and were accounted such by others; though they were not true, but false prophets; and so the Targum calls them:

that prophesy; that is, smooth things to the people; promising a speedy return from the captivity; or that Jerusalem should not be taken by the Chaldeans, and the inhabitants of it, and of the land, be carried captive:

and say thou unto them that prophesy out of their own hearts; who were not sent of God, nor spake from him; but of themselves, what came into their heads, and was agreeable to their fancies, imaginations, and carnal hearts; such are false teachers, that go forth without being sent, and teach not according to the word of God, but according to their own carnal reasonings; so the Targum,

"according to the will of their hearts;''

what they pleased themselves:

hear ye the word of the Lord; which came from the Lord himself, and not from man, meaning the following prophecy; so the written word of God should be attended to, both by teachers and hearers, as the only rule of faith and practice; see Isaiah 8:20.

2. that prophesy—namely, a speedy return to Jerusalem.

out of … own hearts—alluding to the words of Jeremiah (Jer 23:16, 26); that is, what they prophesied was what they and the people wished; the wish was father to the thought. The people wished to be deceived, and so were deceived. They were inexcusable, for they had among them true prophets (who spoke not their own thoughts, but as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, 2Pe 1:21), whom they might have known to be such, but they did not wish to know (Joh 3:19).

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