Ezekiel 22

Ezekiel 22:16

I, who was once your inheritance, have cast you off, and now you may support yourselves in your notorious wretchedness, in the best way you can

Ezekiel 22:18-22

They are even growing worse and worse in the midst of I. of my judgments upon them, and therefore shall be terribly punished and destroyed

Ezekiel 22:24-30

They are not refined, nor washed, by the judgments which I have inflicted. Their prophets combine against upright persons; and persecute, rob, and murder, such as oppose them. Their priests wrest my laws to countenance their oppression and impiety: they irreverently officiate in my service: and neither in preaching nor in practice make any difference between right and wrong, clean or unclean; they take no care to have my sabbaths observed: and thus dishonour me by their infamous conduct. Their princes have abandoned themselves to cruelty, murder, oppression, and extortion. Their prophets, by false reasonings, and unstudied discourses, pretended visions, and presages of peace and prosperity, flatter them in their sinful courses. And there is none among them who either apply themselves to reform the nation, or to supplicate the prevention of my judgments

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. XXII.—Lord, what are men, that they, that professors of the true religion, should be such monsters! And what an awful connection there is between the different forms of wickedness! There is nothing so abominable, but forgetfulness of God, and of his relations and favours, may produce it. But very base and contemptible before God are degenerate and hypocritical professors. Dreadful is the case of a nation when prophets, priests, and princes, are accomplices and ringlenders in guilt. And, when there is scarcely a faithful opposer or importunate intercessor, God’s vengeance must break in upon them, and render them infamous and miserable. Then shall they tremble under his hand, and feel what a wretched exchange they have made by their apostasy from him. And, as their stations aggravated their offences, they shall enhance their misery and ruin