Ezekiel 13:4 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Like the foxes in the deserts— Or, as the apostle styles them, 2 Corinthians 11:13 deceitful workers, who craftily insinuate false doctrines into unstable minds, and at the same time are hungry and ravenous, greedily catching at the least appearance of advantage. Houbigant renders it, like the foxes in the walls; for it is usual with these animals in Palestine, we are told, to frequent ruinous walls and places of that sort, in search of the lesser animals for their prey. The next verse seems to allude hereto. Houbigant renders it, You do not ascend the ruins to strengthen the wall for the house of Israel, nor to stand, &c. but merely, like hungry and insidious foxes, to feed yourselves from the vain credulity of the people. Others, however, understand the phrase of standing in the gap, as allusive to the intercession made by Moses for the Israelites; whereby he withheld, as it were, the hand of the Almighty, when it was stretched out to take vengeance on the people in the wilderness. In the 5th verse we may read, You have not stood in the breach, nor repaired the fence, &c.