(5) Ye have not gone up into the gaps.--The change of person is frequent enough in prophecy, and especially common in Ezekiel. It is changed back in Ezekiel 13:6, and changed again in Ezekiel 13:7. The gaps refer to the breaches in the wall made by the enemy, which became the rallying point of every brave leader (see Ezekiel 22:30), and the following words express essentially the same thought. The word "hedge" should rather be translated wall--"neither have ye built up the wall." The false prophets, like the hireling shepherds of John 10:12, were only selfish, and had no care for the flock. The whole language is figurative, the breaches in the material walls representing the moral decay of the people.
Verse 5. - The verse contains two distinct images. There were breaches in the walls of Jerusalem, literally and spiritually, and the false prophets had not been as "repairers of the breach" (Isaiah 58:12; Psalm 106:23). The hedge of the vineyard of Israel had been broken through (Isaiah 5:5), and they had done nothing to restore it (Ezekiel 22:30). The day of battle, the day of the Lord, had come, and they were betraying the people instead of helping.
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.
Ye have not gone up into the gaps,.... Or "breaches" (d); so the Targum. The allusion is to breaches made in the walls of a city when besieged; at which time those within gather together in great numbers to meet the enemy, and prevent his entrance by the breaches. These words are either spoken to the princes of Israel, the civil magistrates; or to the prophets, who seeing the sins of the people, like a mighty torrent, opening a breach for the wrath and judgments of God to pour in upon them, should have called them, and importunately pressed them to repentance and reformation, and to have put up their prayers, and made intercession to God for them; neither of which they did, and therefore are here blamed; see Ezekiel 22:30;
neither made up the hedge for the house of Israel; or a "fence", a fortification. The Vulgate Latin renders it, "a wall"; a new wall, which is generally made by the besieged within, when a breach is made upon them: it signifies the same as before. Jarchi and Kimchi interpret it of repentance and good works; and so the Targum, which paraphrases the words thus,
"neither have ye done for yourselves good works, to deprecate for the house of Israel, to stand to pray for them:''
to stand in the battle in the day of the Lord: when he came forth in battle array against them, with great wrath and indignation, in the way of his righteous judgments. The Targum is,
"when warriors come up against them in the day of the wrath of the Lord;''
when the Chaldeans came against them by the will of God, he being angry with them.
neither made up the hedge for the house of Israel; or a "fence", a fortification. The Vulgate Latin renders it, "a wall"; a new wall, which is generally made by the besieged within, when a breach is made upon them: it signifies the same as before. Jarchi and Kimchi interpret it of repentance and good works; and so the Targum, which paraphrases the words thus,
"neither have ye done for yourselves good works, to deprecate for the house of Israel, to stand to pray for them:''
to stand in the battle in the day of the Lord: when he came forth in battle array against them, with great wrath and indignation, in the way of his righteous judgments. The Targum is,
"when warriors come up against them in the day of the wrath of the Lord;''
when the Chaldeans came against them by the will of God, he being angry with them.
(d) "in fracturas", Pagninus, Montanus, Tigurine version; "rupturas", Calvin, Piscator, Starckius.