Ezekiel records a brief but piercing accusation:
“Because with lies ye have made the heart of the righteous sad, whom I have not made sad; and strengthened the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life. Therefore ye shall see no more vanity, nor divine divinations: for I will deliver my people out of your hand: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.”
— Ezekiel 13:22–23
In two sentences the prophet sketches a disturbing scene. People who speak in God’s name use that authority to do two things at once: they dishearten those who are trying to live faithfully, and they reassure those who have no intention of changing. The righteous are made miserable without cause; the wicked are made comfortable without warrant. The entire operation is carried on under a religious signboard.
This is not an oddity of the sixth century BC. The pattern is familiar enough. In many corners of religious life today, through a mixture of complacency, timidity, and straightforward deceit, those who have influence over consciences treat serious-minded believers as expendable and treat the morally indifferent as a market. It is precisely the sort of inversion Ezekiel describes.
What follows is an attempt to trace the logic of this passage and to consider what it implies about the way we handle the “heart of the righteous” in any age. The emphasis is on clarity, how false words wound those they should protect, how they embolden those they should restrain, why such deception is so serious, and why the text remains, in the end, encouraging to those who have been harmed by it.
The Heart of the Righteous as a Trust
Ezekiel assumes something that modern institutions are often reluctant to admit: influence over people’s spiritual understanding is a form of custody. Those who teach, preach, counsel, or publish in God’s name do not address a neutral audience. They speak into lives that are already oriented, however imperfectly, toward obedience.
The “righteous” in this passage are not paragons of flawless virtue. They are those who have, at some cost, committed themselves to the path they believe God requires of them. They are not consumers shopping for a mood; they are, frequently, people who have accepted unpopularity, loss, or private struggle in order to remain faithful to the Lord. Their sensitivity is not a flaw but an essential feature of their moral life.
To such people God says, in effect: “I did not place on them the burden you have added with your lies.” There is, therefore, a type of spiritual sadness which does not come from God at all. It is not the discomfort of conviction, which clarifies and cleanses, but the disorientation produced by seeing God portrayed in ways that contradict His own character.
When someone speaks in God’s name, that person is, in practice, taking temporary possession of the hearer’s inner world: their view of God, their sense of security, their understanding of right and wrong. The heart of the righteous, then, is not simply a “target demographic.” It is a trust. To deal with it carelessly is to damage something both sensitive and valuable.
How False Words Wound the Faithful
Ezekiel’s sequence is simple. Lies are told in God’s name. Those lies fall hardest on the righteous. Their hearts become “sad,” weighed down, troubled, even suspicious of the very God they have tried to obey. That sadness is not the normal cost of discipleship; it is an avoidable by-product of misrepresentation.
This can happen in several ways.
One common route is through distorted portraits of God. If the deity presented from the pulpit resembles a celestial bureaucrat, carefully noting infractions and reluctant to be gracious, or a detached determinist, regarding human effort with a kind of amused inevitability, then believers who have poured themselves out in prayer and effort begin to wonder whether they have mistaken the entire arrangement. They do not become less serious; they become more anxious. The God they loved as Father is replaced, in their imagination, by something more akin to an impersonal system.
Another route is the moralization of human weakness. Fatigue, emotional strain, and the ordinary frailties of human psychology are recast as spiritual failures. The tired mother, the chronically ill believer, the anxious worker, may hear little beyond rebuke. Disappointment is branded unbelief; discouragement is labeled rebellion. In such a setting, the more conscientious one is, the more likely one is to feel crushed.
There is also a quieter message, not always stated but often implied: that steady obedience is a sort of naivety. When the language of the world: efficiency, success, self-fulfilment, becomes the language of the church, those who have actually sacrificed something to retain their integrity are made to feel that they have misunderstood how the game is played. If the official admiration is reserved for the shrewd rather than the upright, the righteous are not only tired; they are subtly mocked.
In each of these cases, it is not the hardness of truth that hurts, but its distortion. The believer’s suffering is no longer the honest pain of facing reality; it is the fruit of being handed a crooked map and told that it accurately represents the terrain.
How Lies Strengthen the Wicked
Ezekiel’s second charge is the mirror image of the first: while the righteous are being saddened, the wicked are being strengthened. By promising them “life,” the prophets ensure that they “should not return from their wicked way.”
This, too, is recognizable. Behaviour that scripture treats as ruinous is dressed in softer clothes: “struggle,” “journey,” “identity.” Judgment becomes a topic for embarrassment or sophisticated qualification. Repentance is recast as psychological harm. The vocabulary of therapy replaces the vocabulary of moral responsibility.
In such an environment, the person who already prefers not to change finds ample confirmation. A conscience that might have troubled him is soothed instead. He is told, explicitly or by implication, that his problem is not his choices but his critics. He is offered assurance without any serious requirement to reorient his life.
Ezekiel’s insight is that this is not a harmless mistake. To reassure the unrepentant is to become a participant in their continued harm. The image of “strengthening the hands” is apt: what might have been a faltering grip on wrongdoing is firmed up by the promise that no serious consequences will follow.
It is worth noting that such reassurance often presents itself as compassion. It is more comfortable to sit beside someone in their present course than to suggest that the course itself is wrong. Yet, in practical effect, this “compassion” functions like giving a sedative to someone who ought to be roused and moved out of danger. It does not reduce harm; it prolongs it.
The Seriousness of Foundational Deception
Ezekiel’s language is severe because the subject is not incidental. The lies he describes concern the foundational questions of the spiritual life: whether there is genuine judgment, whether repentance is necessary, whether God’s approval can be presumed while continuing in ways He has condemned.
The imagery of whitewashed walls is revealing. The prophets improve the appearance of a structure that is already unsound. Those who trust them walk beside or under that structure unaware of the risk. The problem is not aesthetic; it is structural.
In more abstract terms, deception here is not simply about a “tone” or “style” of teaching but about the basic architecture of reality as it is presented to people. If sin is rendered minor, judgment postponed indefinitely, and grace detached from any call to change, the world that hearers inhabit in their imagination diverges sharply from the world they actually live in.
When that happens, the cross itself is quietly downgraded. If there is little to be saved from, there is little need for a costly salvation. A universe in which sin is a misunderstanding, and judgment a metaphor, can accommodate religious language, but it no longer requires a crucified and risen Christ in any serious sense.
To alter these foundations is, in effect, to interfere with people’s understanding of their own destiny. It is this, rather than a simple dislike of theological variation, that explains the intensity of Ezekiel’s critique.
Why Such Distortions Persist
If the effects are so damaging, why are such patterns so common? Scripture and experience suggest that the causes are usually not exotic.
The desire to comfort without cost is powerful. Pointing out what is wrong carries social risk; it can end in hostility or loss of status. Many people who occupy influential positions recoil from anything that looks or feels like severity, particularly in a culture that prizes affirmation.
There is also the lure of approval. People listen more readily to what makes them feel immediately better about themselves. Platforms grow more quickly when they avoid subjects that disturb. It is unsurprising, then, that some learn to omit whatever might thin the crowd.
Fear plays its part as well. To insist on unpopular convictions, whether about personal conduct, social ethics, or the limits of human autonomy, is to place oneself on the wrong side of many conversations. The prospect of being dismissed as narrow or unkind is frequently enough to produce a strategic silence.
Over time, these factors can harden into a culture in which truth is quietly shaped to fit expectations. The casualties of this arrangement are not, in the first place, the cynical or the indifferent, who are simply confirmed in what they already believe. The real cost is borne by those who still care about reality and find themselves unable to obtain a clear account of it from the very people they are told to trust.
Godly Intervention in Defence of the Misled
Ezekiel’s passage does not end by simply condemning the deceivers. It ends with a declaration of intent: the lies will cease, God’s people will be rescued, and His own character will be publicly vindicated.
The first element is the ending of “vanity” and counterfeit “divinations.” The mechanisms that sustain illusion: persuasive speech, religious performance, institutional prestige, are not beyond collapse. History offers sufficient examples of once-impressive systems and personalities whose influence eventually disintegrated when reality could no longer be deferred.
The second is the deliberate rescue of those affected. “I will deliver my people out of your hand” implies that the damage, though real, is not final. People who have been misinformed can, over time, be renewed. Those who have been unnecessarily burdened can learn to distinguish between God’s demands and human additions. The mind can be reoriented; the conscience can be re-clarified.
Finally, there is the matter of God’s own name. When religious activity presents Him as other than He is, there is a kind of reputational injustice done to God Himself. Ezekiel’s promise that “ye shall know that I am the LORD” suggests that there comes a point when the difference between the caricature and the reality becomes unmistakable. The righteous, who have trusted Him despite confusion, discover that their trust was better placed in God than in some of the accounts they were given of Him.
The Ethics of Dealing with the Righteous
From this passage there emerges a simple but demanding ethic for anyone who handles spiritual influence.
The first requirement is restraint in claiming God’s endorsement. To attach “God says” to what is simply a personal preference, institutional interest, or fashionable opinion is to misuse the most weighty name available. It turns what should be an honest argument into a form of moral blackmail.
The second is a clear distinction between the needs of different hearers. Not everyone should be addressed in the same way. Those who are already troubled about their failures and genuinely seeking to obey require assurance, guidance, and proportion. Those who are resolutely uninterested in any moral claim require clarity about consequences and a realistic account of what their present course entails. Reversing these treatments, as Ezekiel’s false prophets did, is a form of injustice.
A third requirement is resistance to measuring success by numbers or acclaim. If the ethical test of ministry is whether the righteous are helped and the wicked warned, then popularity is at best an unreliable indicator and at worst a distraction. There are situations in which doing the right thing will predictably diminish one’s audience.
Finally, there is the matter of tone. To deal with the hearts of the righteous as though they were disposable is not only theologically wrong; it is, in any human context, a kind of professional malpractice. An honest doctor does not sneer at a patient’s vulnerability. An honest teacher does not exploit a student’s trust. There is no good reason to hold those who deal with spiritual realities to a lower standard.
Encouragement for the Needlessly Sad
Many readers will recognize themselves more readily among the saddened righteous than among the theoretical observers. They have tried to take God seriously and have, along the way, been weighed down by depictions of Him that left them fearful, exhausted, or quietly resentful.
A few observations may be of use.
First, not every sadness that comes to you wrapped in religious language comes from God. If your view of Him has become colder and smaller than the Christ portrayed in the Gospels, it is reasonable to ask whether you have been dealing with a distortion rather than with God Himself. Ezekiel’s phrase “whom I have not made sad” legitimizes that question.
Second, the desire for unembellished truth is not stubbornness; it is a sign of health. To want teaching that neither minimizes sin nor caricatures grace, that neither excuses everything nor condemns everything, is not a defect. It is precisely the sort of appetite that makes constructive growth possible.
Third, the misuse of your trust is seen. Even if the people or institutions involved remain unrepentant, the fact of your being misled or unduly burdened is not invisible at the level that ultimately matters. Ezekiel’s audience needed to know that their situation had not escaped God’s notice; the same assurance can reasonably be drawn today.
Fourth, harmful teaching, however severe its effects, does not have the final word over a believing life. While it can waste years and inflict genuine damage, it cannot, in the end, prevent someone from learning better. People do revise their understanding; they do recover a clearer picture of God; they do regain a sense of proportion and peace.
Finally, the conviction that faithfulness is not foolishness is worth keeping. It may be difficult to maintain in environments where expediency is rewarded and compromise is treated as maturity. Yet the logic of Ezekiel 13 is ultimately that reality reasserts itself: the hands of the wicked, strengthened by lies, do not remain strong indefinitely, and the hearts of the righteous, saddened by those lies, are not left in that condition forever.
Conclusion
Ezekiel 13:22–23 describes an ethical reversal: people entrusted with the task of clarifying spiritual reality make it harder for the righteous and easier for the wicked. They invert God’s intention, injure those who are already trying to do what is right, and obscure from the indifferent the seriousness of their situation. The passage is unembarrassed in its judgment of such behaviour.
At the same time, it introduces a countervailing force: the determination of God to end the deception, to rescue those affected, and to reclaim His own reputation from those who have traded on it. For those concerned with integrity in religious life, the text offers both a warning and a reassurance.
The warning is straightforward: influence over the hearts of the righteous is never a trivial matter. What is said, or left unsaid, in the name of God can either support their difficult obedience or sap it. The reassurance is equally clear: even where human institutions fail in this responsibility, the story does not end there. The “holy care due to the hearts of the righteous” is not, in the final analysis, dependent solely on those who wield microphones and titles. It is anchored in a God who regards those hearts as His own possession, and who claims responsibility for their ultimate welfare.
Pastor Thomas Irvin
George County Baptist Church
Lucedale, Mississippi
