Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Ezekiel · About this commentary
Noah, Daniel and Job
Ezekiel 14:1-23
1 Then some of the elders of Israel came to me and sat before me. · WEB
Elders come to inquire with idols already in their hearts, and are told that three of the most righteous men who ever lived could not have saved anyone but themselves.
The scene is the same as chapter 8 — elders sitting before the prophet to inquire — and the question God asks about them is blunt: Should I be inquired of at all by them? The charge is located precisely. They have taken their idols into their heart and put the stumbling block of their iniquity before their face. Nothing is said about images in their houses. The problem is portable and internal. It has come into the room with them.
What God says he will do about the inquiry is the most unsettling sentence in the chapter: I Yahweh will answer him there according to the multitude of his idols. A man who comes with his heart already committed will get an answer shaped to what he brought, and he will experience it as an answer from God. It is a judicial act with a stated purpose: that I may take the house of Israel in their own heart. The related verse about a deceived prophet works the same way Ezekiel 14:9. Both are the settled scriptural pattern of a lie permitted to people who insisted on one 1 Kings 22:22–23. And in the middle of it stands an open door: Return, and turn yourselves from your idols!
The second half answers a hope the exiles were evidently holding. Four times the same case is put — famine, wild animals, sword, pestilence — and four times the same verdict is given about three named men: though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would deliver only their own souls by their righteousness. Not sons, not daughters. The three are chosen for a reason a reader can check. Each is on record as a righteous man who survived a catastrophe. In two of the three cases a household was preserved with him. Precisely that is withdrawn here.
The argument being closed is the one from Sodom, where a city could have been spared for ten righteous men Genesis 18:32. That bargain is not available to Jerusalem, and the chapter says so four times over so that nobody misses it. What is offered instead is stranger and better than a reprieve. A remnant will be brought out, and the exiles who receive them will see their way and their doings — that is, see how the survivors behave. Then they will be comforted. Comfort is promised not from an explanation but from evidence, and the conclusion drawn is the only one that could settle the matter: you will know that I have not done all that I have done in it without cause.
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