A Man in the Gap

Ezekiel 22 is a courtroom indictment of the bloody city. God asked: Will you judge? Then he told Ezekiel to cause her to know all her abominations. The charges echo the law of Moses. Parents were treated with contempt; the foreigner was oppressed; the fatherless and the widow were wronged. God's holy things were despised and his Sabbaths profaned. Bribes were taken, interest charged, neighbors defrauded, and, at the root, the people had forgotten God.

The second oracle uses the image of a refiner's furnace. The house of Israel had become dross, like bronze, tin, iron, and lead left in the furnace with no silver. God would gather them into Jerusalem and blow on them, so they would know he had poured out his wrath. The point was not cruelty but truth: the heat of judgment would expose what was left of their faithfulness.

The third oracle surveys every level of society. The prophets daubed whitewash and saw false visions. The priests did violence to God's law and made no distinction between holy and common. The princes were like wolves ravening the prey. The people of the land practiced extortion and oppressed the poor and needy. Then comes the saddest line, where God says: I sought for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I would not destroy it; but I found no one. In the New Testament, 1 Timothy 2:5 says: For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.