Who Will Fill the Gap in Israel's wall of protection? 521 - 6 - 6

God tells Ezekiel that there is nothing and no one to stand in the “gap” that Israel has made in her wall of protection. Who/what should have been “gap” fillers? Who/what fills the gap for us today?

With thanks to the Blue Letter Bible website:

1) breach, gap, bursting forth

a) bursting forth, outburst

b) breach

c) broken wall

d) outburst (fig. of God's wrath)

Before the Northern Kingdom was finally defeated and scattered they were warned to repent after an initial attack (gap). They ignored this warning and remained proud and defiant.

Isaiah 9 9, “And all the people shall know, even Ephraim and the inhabitant of Samaria, that say in the pride and stoutness of heart,

10 The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars.

11 Therefore the Lord shall set up the adversaries of Rezin against him, and join his enemies together;

12 The Syrians before, and the Philistines behind; and they shall devour Israel with open mouth. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.

13 For the people turneth not unto him that smiteth them, neither do they seek the Lord of hosts.”

Judah learned nothing from the demise of the Northern Kingdom. Rather than listening to God's prophets, King Zedekiah instead preferred message of the false prophets who pointed out what seemed to be an inconsistency in the prophecies of Ezekiel and Jeremiah. Both prophecies were fulfilled exactly as God said they would be. So Jerusalem was destroyed and King Zedekiah was blinded and taken captive to Babylon.

Ezekiel 22:28-31, “And her prophets have daubed them with untempered morter, seeing vanity, and divining lies unto them, saying, Thus saith the Lord God, when the Lord hath not spoken.

29 The people of the land have used oppression, and exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy: yea, they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully.

30 And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none.

31 Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath: their own way have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord God.

Even the priests had their idols so no one was found to fill the gap, to mend the breach in the wall. An earlier return to God perhaps would have been the tempered morter that would have saved Jerusalem from the “outburst of God's wrath.”

 In recent years we in the United States have had a number of warnings or “shakings” to quote Messianic Rabbi Jonathon Cain. There are voices “crying in the wilderness” that is present day America, however, few listen. Rather most are doing “what is right in their own minds,” filling their inherent spiritual gap with the untempered morter of sinful behavior.