Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath: their own way have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord GOD.
Their own way have I recompensed upon their heads - (Ezekiel 9:10; Ezekiel 11:21; Ezekiel 16:43; Proverbs 1:31; Isaiah 3:11; Jeremiah 6:19).
Remarks:
(1) The prophet is directed to judge 'the city of bloods' for her abominations. She had promised profit to herself by her acts of violence; but she only brought the sooner upon herself "her time" of punishment; and in sinning against God she sinned "against herself," to her own awful ruin (Ezekiel 22:3), and "caused her days to draw near" when God made her "a reproach and mocking to all countries" (Ezekiel 22:4). They who think to gain by sin will find that they only lose by it the favour of God, and their own peace and happiness.
(2) A long and black catalogue of Jerusalem's iniquities is given. Her princes, whose power ought to have been exercised in maintaining justice, were foremost in making the "arm" of might their only law (Ezekiel 22:6). A leading sin in her was also that there were many who "set light by father and mother" (Ezekiel 22:7). Disrespect to parents saps the foundations of society and of religion by creating a self-willed spirit, impatient of all human authority, and therefore reckless of the law of God. It is to be a characteristic also of the last days, before Christ's coming to destroy Antichrist (2 Timothy 3:2), that men shall be "lovers of their own selves, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents" Oppression of the friendless and unprotected, as the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow (Ezekiel 22:7), is peculiarly displeasing to the God who "preserveth the strangers" (Psalms 146:9), and is the "Father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows" (Psalms 68:5). By this sin-and by contempt of holy things, profanation of the Sabbath of the Lord (Ezekiel 22:8), talebearing to the hurt of others (Ezekiel 22:9), lewdness (Ezekiel 22:10-11), greed of gain and extortion-Judah provoked the wrath of God; and having given herself up to the dominion of lust, was rightly given up to be punished by that lust. The root of all her sins was, she had "forgotten" her God (Ezekiel 22:12). Let us when tempted by sin remember God, and then temptation will lose its power over us, and like Joseph we shall say, "How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?" (Genesis 39:9.)
(3) Judah, when cast off by God, learned in her exile what an awful difference there is between having the Lord for her inheritance and "taking her inheritance in her self" (Ezekiel 22:16). No greater punishment can be inflicted on the guilty than that they should be given up to themselves and their own sin.
(4) Judgments often bring sinners to "know the Lord" (Ezekiel 22:16), when mercies fail to do so; even as the dispersion of the Jews among the Gentiles (Ezekiel 22:15) is the appointed means for consuming her filthiness out of her.
(5) Once the Israelite nation had been as gold and silver among the nations, but now it was become "dross," combined with the baser metals, "brass, tin, iron, and lead" (Ezekiel 22:18; Isaiah 1:22), Backsliders from the truth which they have once known are as refuse, fit for nothing, in God's eyes. It is much harder to bring to a right mind those who have degenerated from original good than those who have never known the way of God.
(6) The Jewish nation accordingly was to be thrown into the furnace, that the mass of dross might be destroyed, and the small remnant of the good be purified and separated from the transgressors. However painful the furnace of trial be to the godly, let them comfort themselves by the reflection that God designs it for their sanctification. But let sinners tremble, and flee at once from the wrath to come, because the coming fire which purifies the righteous will consume the ungodly.
(7) The land that is full of sin uncleansed, and that lacks the reviving influences of the Holy Spirit, is a moral wilderness, such as a land would be from which God in His "indignation" withheld the fertilizing rains (Ezekiel 22:24). Such was Judea: her prophets conspired together to "devour souls" for "prey" (Ezekiel 22:25), instead of being banded together for good; her priests, the interpreters of the law (Malachi 2:7), "violated the law," and "made no difference between the holy and the profane" (Ezekiel 22:26); and her princes, the administrators of justice, "got dishonest gain" (Ezekiel 22:27). Then, when judgments were about to descend on account of these crying national sins, the prophets, with lying divinations assured the people there would be peace; just as if one were to daub the tottering wall of a house (Psalms 62:3) with untempered mortar, and persuade its tenants that there was no danger (Ezekiel 22:28): while the people were equally tainted with the universal corruption, which spread downward from the upper classes and pervaded the whole community (Ezekiel 22:29). Let us all in our several positions exercise what influence we have on the side of good, not evil; for the mass of society is made up of individuals, and on the aggregate of influences for good which pervade it must depend the social and religious well-being of the whole.
(8) Such is the grace of God, that even still He would have gladly blessed the efforts of any godly man arising up among the doomed mass to lead the people to repentance, thereby "making up the hedge;" or any intercessor morally capable of praying for the people, thereby "standing in the gap be fore God for the land, that he should not destroy it" (Ezekiel 22:30): but none such was to be found. Nothing, therefore, remained but that He should "pour out His indignation upon them, and recompense their own way upon them" (Ezekiel 22:31). It is the worst sign of all for a nation or an individual when prayer ceases to be offered. So long as 'there is prayer there is spiritual life: where there is no prayer there is spiritual death. When people are so lost in sin that no godly man any longer intercedes for them, nothing but wrath is before them. Blessed be God, though we deserve wrath, we need never be without an effectual Advocate to stand in the gap before God for us; because though our sin has made a breach between God and us men, the God-man Christ Jesus has stood in the gap, and turned away all God's wrath so that God is now the reconciled Father of all who came unto Him by the Saviour.