Ezekiel 13:17-23 – Don’t be lured by dark forces of evil

Among the false prophets described earlier, Ezekiel 13:17 said there were several prophetesses. Like their male counterpart, they were eroding the trust of the people in God and corrupting the morals of the nation. They were making things up and claimed them as from God. Ezekiel was specifically told to address them. The ultimate purpose that had been articulated before was, “And you shall know that I am the Lord.”

These “so-called” prophetesses were more akin to sorceresses. Like witches, they were introducing practices that God had prohibited. They introduced magic wristbands or amulets and veils for the heads of people of every stature. The people who came consulting them had to have their heads covered. Hence, they had different sizes of veils to cover client’s different physical stature. To say that they were “in hunt for their soul” suggests that spells were being cast over the people who came to consult them.

What were these sorceresses doing? Verse 19 says they were in it for personal gain. In an already depleted resource, they still had the gall to profane the Lord among people to exact “handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread” for their own survival. The people who really needed to be preserved were those who were manipulated by their lies.

Fundamentally, they had mistakenly put the Lord on par with other gods. The equated power derived from the amulet and veils was God’s. Hence God set out to deliver His ensnared people. So, in verses 20-21, He assertedly declared “Behold, I am against your magic bands with which you hunt the souls like birds, and I will tear them from your arms, and I will let the souls whom you hunt go free, the souls like birds. Your veils also I will tear off and deliver my people out of your hand, and they shall be no more in your hand as prey, and you shall know that I am the Lord. 

The cardinal sins these false sorceresses had committed in their manipulation were two. Firstly, they were discouraging the godly with their lies and were encouraging the wicked to continue in their evil and not turn to be saved. In verse 23, when God said, they shall no longer see false visions nor practice divination, He was referring to their demise. In their death, the people would be delivered from the clutches of these false practices.  

The power of darkness is also very active today. In Ephesians 6:12, we are told that “…we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Therefore, we must put on the Lord Jesus Christ represented by the full armor of God. So that “we may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.”