(Chapter 14, Verse 1 onwards) And the elders of Israel came to me and sat before me. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their hearts and have put the stumbling block of their iniquity before their faces. Should I be consulted by them? Therefore speak to them and say to them: Thus says the Lord God: Every man of the house of Israel who sets up his idols in his heart and puts the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face and comes to the prophet, I the Lord will answer him with the multitude of his idols, that I may lay hold of the hearts of the house of Israel, who have turned away from me through all their idols. Therefore say to the house of Israel: Thus says the Lord God: Turn away and withdraw from your idols, and turn your faces away from all your abominations. For any man of the house of Israel, or of the aliens who immigrate to Israel, if he has estranged himself from me in Israel and has set up his idols in his heart, and has placed the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and has come to the prophet to inquire of me through him: I, the Lord, will answer him in person. And I will set my face against that man and make him a sign and a proverb, and I will cut him off from the midst of my people. Then you will know that I am the Lord. And if the prophet is deceived and speaks a word, I am the Lord who has deceived that prophet. I will stretch out my hand against him and destroy him from the midst of my people Israel. And they shall bear their punishment—the punishment of the inquirer shall be the same as the punishment of the prophet—so that the house of Israel may no longer go astray from me, nor defile themselves anymore with all their transgressions, but that they may be my people and I may be their God, declares the Lord of hosts. LXX: And the men of the elders of Israel came to me and sat before me. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, these men have set their thoughts in their hearts and have set the torment of their iniquities before their face: If I answer them when they ask? Therefore, speak to them and say to them: Thus says the Lord God: Every man of the house of Israel who sets his thoughts in his heart and sets the torment of his iniquity before his face, and comes to the prophet to inquire of him concerning me: I, the Lord, will answer him with the matters that are on his mind, in order to turn the house of Israel away according to their hearts, which have turned away from me in their thoughts. Therefore say to the house of Israel: Thus says the Lord God: Repent and turn away from your idols, and turn your faces towards me. For all the people of Israel, both those who belong to the nation and those who are foreigners in the land, are accountable to me. Those who have turned away from me and have set their hearts on evil will face punishment for their sins. If they come to a prophet to seek guidance from me, I, the Lord, will answer them according to their own wickedness and I will show my displeasure towards them. I will banish them into a desolate place and remove them from the midst of my people. Then you will know that I am the Lord. And if a prophet should wander astray and speak a word, I, the Lord, have caused that prophet to wander astray. And I will stretch out my hand against him and remove him from the midst of my people Israel. And they shall bear their iniquity according to the iniquity of the inquirer, and the guilt of the prophet shall be the same, so that the house of Israel shall not stray from me and they shall not yet be defiled by all their sins. And they shall be to me a people, and I will be to them a God, says the Lord God. After he spoke to the prophets who prophesied in their hearts, and they plastered the wall without tempering it; and to the prophetesses who used necklaces and placed their hands under every elbow, and made veils and covered the heads of all ages (through which the doctrine of perverse teachings is shown), they came to the prophet, not all of the elders, lest they all seem to be mistaken; but some of the elders of Israel, and they sat before the prophet: for what reason they had come, they were waiting in silence; and immediately the word of God came to the prophet, indicating why they were present. For it is not within the nature of man, no matter how holy, to know the secrets of the heart. Hence it is said of the Savior alone: 'And Jesus knowing their thoughts, said: Why do you think evil in your hearts?' (Matthew 9). The meaning is: Son of man, these men who sit before you have placed their impurities or thoughts in their hearts; and, according to Symmachus and Theodotion, idols and scandal, that is, the destruction and torment of their wickedness, they have set against their own face and thus they came to seek the word of the Lord. Should I respond to people of this kind, who come to me with their previous thoughts, not even abandoning their impiety in this time, but believing in idols and fraudulent divinations; holding on to the ruin of wickedness against their own face and torment, while despairing of better things and being prepared for punishment, and thus desiring to know my words through you? Therefore, since they have come to you with a corrupt heart, respond to them not in your own person, so that the authority of the one responding is not slight; but by my command, and say to them: Thus says the Lord God. But the summary of the whole passage, in a brief explanation, is this: Man is not like other nations, which may receive pardon for their errors, but the house of Israel, who, coming to the prophet to inquire about their former vices, mentioned above, I will answer them according to their heart, and their impurities, so that they may hear according to what they desire and believe. For he does not deserve correction, who asks not with the intention of learning, but of testing. For they have departed from me, and have followed idols. And this is a brief warning, that they may depart from idols and perverse thoughts, and turn to me, leaving behind their former sins. For he who deceitfully asks does not deserve to hear the truth, but he must be captured by his own heart, just as the scribes and Pharisees, questioning the Lord, or rather testing Him, hear: Why do you test me? And again: Nor will I tell you by what authority I do these things (Matthew 21:27). But whoever is such a person, and thus asks, God sets His face upon him, or confirms; as by the severity of His countenance, the hardness of His forehead is softened, and becomes an example, and a proverb, or solitude, and destruction, so that by the destruction of him from the people of God, others may know that He is the Lord who knows the secrets of the heart, and understands the perverseness of the mind; and He does not consider the words of those who speak, but their hearts. And what follows seems to raise the question: When a prophet errs and speaks a word, I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet, we cannot say that he is a true prophet, but rather a false prophet, who is called a prophet in a derivative sense. And this can be understood from the Scripture passage when King Ahab of Israel goes to battle, he does not want to listen to the prophet Micaiah, but rather he complies with the advice of the false prophets (1 Kings 22). And Michael says that he saw the Lord sitting on a throne, and that the spirit of error offered itself willingly to deceive the king. The Devil is also said to go about the earth in the book of Job, and it is said that he can receive power from the Lord over Job's substance and then his body (Job. 1 and 2). And Balaam the diviner is sent by the Lord to deceive Balak son of Beor (Num. 22). But all of this is said so that the strength of false prophets is not regarded, that the people are deceived, and that they prefer to hear lies rather than accommodate their ears to the truth. But it is said that it is to the wrath of God, that the perverse and unbelieving people would rather listen to false prophets than true prophets. Finally, he extends his hand over him, understood, the prophet, and he is erased from the midst of his people, to bear his iniquity, so that there may be a similar error and a similar punishment: so that both the one who asks and the one who is asked may bear their iniquity, and not at all shall the house of Israel be deceived by the perverse prophecies of those who have wanted to hear the words of God; but may they be the people of God and may they deserve to have the Lord. In what he said: 'I, the Lord, have deceived him,' the words of Solomon agree, who, in speaking about God, says: 'He will mock the mockers' (Prov. III, 34), and this testimony: 'If the wicked walk contrary to me, I will also walk contrary to them in fury' (Lev. XXVI, 27, 28). And what is said secondly, 'a man of the sons of Israel and of the strangers who join themselves to them,' shows in us, according to the Apostle, a twofold man, outward and inward (I Cor. XV). For they have the outward appearance of a human being, but assume the images of various animals, which the prophet, wishing to disperse them, implores: Lord, in your city you will disperse their image (Psalm 73:20). Those of whom it is written: Though a person is in honor, they do not understand; they are compared to senseless animals and become like them (Psalm 49:21). They are not true human beings, but rather human beings are like animals. Again, those who hear in the Gospel, 'You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?' (Matthew 23:33) are not humans, but humans snakes. And about whom it is written, 'Foxes have dens, and birds have nests in the sky.' (Matthew 8:20) and about Herod, 'Go and tell that fox.' (Luke 13:32) They are not humans, but humans foxes. But those who possess both terms of human, if they stray, are corrected through punishments, so that they understand that He Himself is the Lord. And also what we have set forth according to the Septuagint: It is fitting that the person who has been estranged from me, and has placed his thoughts in his heart, and the torment or punishment of his wickedness before his face, should receive witness that it is written in Isaiah: Walk in the light of your fire, and in the flame that you have kindled (Isaiah 50:11). For each person kindles the ardor of flames for himself, and prepares punishments, while he does not want to correct the errors of his mistaken heart with repentance, but remains in errors, deserving the burning of flames.
Those dissatisfied with any facet of your creation are unsound in mind, as I was when many things that you made displeased me. Because my soul did not dare to be dissatisfied with my God, it would not identify as yours whatever dissatisfied it. In this way it had strayed into a belief in two substances, and it got no rest but recounted the opinions of others. Recoiling from that error, it had made for itself a god inhabiting the boundless area of all space, and it had considered that god to be you, and had “set it in its heart” and had become again the shrine of its idol, deserving of your loathing. But after you stroked my ignorant head and closed my eyes so that they should not see vanity, I retired from myself a little, and my madness was lulled to sleep. I awoke in you and saw you infinite in a different way, and that vision was not with the eyes of the flesh.
It is quite clear that God works in people’s hearts to incline their wills to whatsoever way he wills: either to good in accordance with his mercy or to evil in accordance with their evil merits, and this, indeed, by his own judgments, sometimes manifest, sometimes hidden, but always just. You must keep this conviction firm and unshaken in your heart that in God there is no injustice. Accordingly, when you read the truth of the Scriptures and find that people are led astray by God or that their hearts are dulled and hardened by him, have no doubt that it was their previous evil merits that made them suffer their just penalties.
You must believe that there were evil merits in that person whom God permits to go astray and to become hardened. But for the person on whom he has mercy, you must acknowledge with an unswerving faith that this is a case of the grace of God who is not rendering evil for evil but good for evil.
Which of the two, patience or power, do you find in the words of Scripture? Whichever you choose, even if you admit both, you must surely see that the false speech of this prophet is both sin and punishment for sin. Will you also say that the words, “I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet,” should be interpreted as though God deserted him that he might be deceived in return for past misdeeds and thus err? Say what you will, he was punished for sin in such a way that he sinned prophesying something false.
[AD 420] Jerome on Ezekiel 14:1-11